How Cloud Storage Inspires Innovation in Education

As technology continues to transform virtually every aspect of our daily lives, it makes sense that it’s also transforming the way we impart knowledge and teach in the hallowed halls of learning, and for the better. Today’s students are always connected and at the forefront of everything digital, so by embracing technology in the classroom like it’s been embraced at home, you’ll have a fully engaged class, innovating and eager to learn. Educational institutions of all sizes have been adopting cloud-based technology at a record pace to deliver:

• Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration
• Modernization that saves time (and saves the environment)
• Enhanced security to protect sensitive data
• Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

Your goal is to inspire future generations to do truly incredible things, and by modernizing your education stack to teach smarter, you can adapt to anything that comes your way…including a global pandemic, for instance.

For teachers

Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration

Whether you’re in a classroom, lecture hall, or teaching remotely, disseminating resources and collecting assignments can be cumbersome, and keeping students engaged with the course material virtually is a challenge. This is where utilizing technology in the classroom can be transformative.

By enhancing communication between teachers, faculty, TAs, and students, cloud-based productivity tools break down barriers to collaboration. Students can access course material on their own terms, from anywhere, anytime. Collecting assignments is easier, providing feedback is much faster, and you’ll have an entire classroom always on the same page. With today’s shift to remote learning and virtual classrooms, tools that make learning easier and more accessible can make a significant impact in the quality of education you deliver.

Modernization that saves time

There’s nothing quite like waiting around a photocopier for ages, transporting large stacks of paper, or navigating through your institution’s well-intentioned but old-school policies and procedures just to get work done. But who has the time? By embracing modern technology, outdated workflows are easily optimized, creating a more efficient learning environment that inspires innovation, ignites imagination, and reduces your carbon footprint. Gain more time for your students and yourself—and build a better future for all.

Enhanced security to protect sensitive data

Moving to the cloud doesn’t have to come at the expense of security and privacy either. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Strong encryption, access control features, and data privacy compliance help keep your classroom safe and secure, regardless of if your classroom is in real life or virtual.  IT department approved.

Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

The best part of using the cloud is that going above-and-beyond for your students doesn’t have to mean reaching into your own pocketbook or increasing department expenses. With a pay-as-you go model and free apps at your fingertips, you can reduce costs and reinvest those savings back into providing an even better education.

For students

Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration

Teamwork makes the dream work, however, group projects are not always the easiest to manage, because different personalities, schedules, and work styles can get in the way. So how to best keep everyone connected, engaged, and contributing evenly? Cloud-based apps help accelerate team productivity and move group projects forward with fast and easy file sharing and collaboration features designed to keep ideas flowing and homework on track. With teams using the cloud to get organized and get projects done, you’ll be making the dream work for everyone.

Modernization that saves time

Stacks of paper and piles of textbooks can weigh students down, literally. Not only is this a health hazard, but it can turn learning into a chore. Students are travelling between homes, schools, libraries, coffee shops, and more, and they don’t need all that extra baggage slowing them down. With students always online, modernization can easily shrink the contents of a 30-pound backpack down to a pocket-sized device. By embracing technology to provide increased accessibility with less physical labor, your students just might arrive earlier, hand in assignments quicker, and have more time to study the important things in life, like the latest TikTok craze (is Renegade still happening?).

Enhanced security to protect sensitive data

Don’t let broken hardware, a lost device, or security threats such as ransomware eat your homework. Cloud-based apps provide an added layer of security and protection for both students and teachers, ensuring schoolwork is always backed up and can be recovered easily in virtually all situations. Never lose a file again, to dogs or anything else.

Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

Downloading cost savings onto students should be a priority for your institution, as it can lead to happy, healthier outcomes (binging on ramen day after day is probably not a good thing). With the cloud, students can get up and running completely free and won’t have to spend a fortune on expensive textbooks and printed resources. With money to spare, adding an egg or a side of lettuce to that ramen will definitely lead to healthier outcomes.

For researchers

Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration

Getting complex research projects with multiple collaborators up and running can be difficult. How do you connect your internal team with external research partners and peers that are working from various locations all over the world? With the cloud as your key element, connecting teams and ideas together is easy. Need to disseminate research material quickly? Need to collaborate on documents with multiple participants easily? Need to share data across borders? No problem is too hard to solve with the power of the cloud pushing your collaborative research forward. Your team will be changing the world in no time.

Modernization that saves time

Outdated processes and ancient technology can slow your research down, keeping you from making that next big discovery. And yet the largest, most successful research groups in the world have adopted technology to modernize their workflows and replace outdated systems—giving them the speed to compete. Modern technology evens the playing field, which means that you can replace clunky, on-premise hardware with distributed cloud-based systems to process data quicker, collect data faster, and compete. Start trailblazing.

Enhanced security to protect sensitive data

Important confidential research needs protection from prying eyes. You don’t want someone stealing your life’s work, and you certainly don’t want to lose a research grant or funding to another team. So how does the cloud keep your data safe? Strong encryption and built-in access controls ensure that your files are protected from unauthorized access at all times, even when sharing. The cloud gives you full control over who has access to your potentially award-winning work. With the safety and security of the cloud backing up your data, you and your team will be Nobel Laureates in no time.

Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

Grant approval requires budget justification, and what better way to persuade the powers that be than to come in under budget in your research proposal. The cloud can help by replacing costly hardware and manual labor with cost-efficient virtualized hardware and crowdsourced labor. The cloud’s low-cost payment model can free up budget that you can then use elsewhere, for the win.

For administrators

Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration

With so many moving parts, managing the operations of an educational institution is no easy task. From addressing student inquiries, maintaining academic records, coordinating intake, interacting with the community, and so much more, how do you keep your students, faculty, support staff, parents, and the community at large in sync? Here’s where the cloud can help. By embracing tools that encourage communication and enable collaboration between people, projects, departments, and teams, your entire organization will be working as one cohesive team. And with open communication and improved access to data, you’ll have a happier, healthier workplace.

Modernization that saves time

Nobody likes long lines, but long lines and even longer wait times have become a fact of life at schools everywhere. Increased applications, admissions, and larger class sizes are stretching internal resources to the limit, which may seem untenable—but there is a solution. By modernizing the day-to-day operations of your educational institution, you’ll immediately see reduced wait times with complex processes and procedures becoming much easier (and faster) to manage for you and your staff. Gone are the days of paper-based forms, fax machines, and unwieldy email attachments slowing things down. Give your teams more time in the day to innovate, moving to the 21^st century.

Enhanced security to protect sensitive data

Your institution has a reputation to uphold and sensitive, confidential student data to protect. With sophisticated cyber attackers lurking around every corner, protecting your students, teachers, and staff is no easy task. But by moving your operations to the cloud, your team will instantly be backed up and protected from threats, and your IT department will have the tools they need to stop intruders in their tracks. Threats be gone.

Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

With budgets being cut across the board and funding sources drying up, finding solutions to lower operational costs while maintaining the quality of education your team delivers each and every day may seem like an impossible task. The benefits of the cloud are undeniable in this regard, with the potential to deliver significant cost savings across-the-board for both learners and providers. From reducing expenditures to reducing overhead, the cloud’s pay-as-you-go payment model provides a solution to the extreme cost pressures brought on by budget constraints, allowing you to budget for a brighter future.

For IT departments

Improved learning experiences that promote collaboration

With the accelerated shift to remote learning, it should come as no surprise that students and teachers alike are in need of new ways to communicate more effectively. More to the point, students, teachers, and staff are leaning on IT to implement and approve new solutions that support a collaborative, virtual learning environment. For IT this means integrating proven cloud-based productivity tools and apps that enable communication and collaboration internally, externally, across networks and across borders, easily. The flexibility of cloud-based solutions can help your IT department help students, teachers, and staff succeed.

Modernization that saves time

While the traditional role of IT may be to maintain infrastructure and provide technical support for the entire organization, it’s clear that the role of IT in education is evolving. With cloud adoption taking hold in the classroom at a record pace, the IT role is now one of innovation and modernization to push technology forward. And what better way to push technology forward than to propose and implement modern solutions that can replace the slow, outdated legacy systems holding everyone back? Help your school hit all the right benchmarks by combining your passion for technology with the raw performance of the cloud.

Enhanced security to protect sensitive data

Data protection is a full-time job for IT departments everywhere. From sophisticated cyber attackers to hardware failure to human error, the threat to your data is real. So how do you ensure your educational institution is safe, secure, and protected from data loss? Integrating the cloud into your school’s disaster recovery plan can help. Fault-tolerant backups with location-based redundancy can mean all the difference in recovering from the types of critical incidents that would typically cause downtime. Beyond backups, strong encryption, user permissions, and granular access controls give IT departments the tools they need to protect data from unauthorized access and maintain data privacy compliance. Keeping your school safe doesn’t have to keep you up at night.

Significant cost savings with increased capabilities

IT departments (along with every other department) are expected to find cost optimizations through innovation and agility, and this perhaps highlights the most significant value-add for educational institutions that have moved their operations to the cloud. The potential for cost savings is huge. Pay-as-you-go pricing allows your institution to scale on-demand, both for user licensing and for resource allocation during peak usage. Simply put, you pay for only what you need. And the cloud offers increased capabilities on all fronts: faster communication, easier collaboration, and improved data security, without the need for additional hardware or costly software. Moving to the cloud can help you deliver and improved learning experiences and promote the development of innovation in students, teachers, and staff at no additional cost!

Sync is your solution

The benefits of moving to the cloud are immeasurable. Whether you’re a large university, a small school, a teacher, a student, a researcher, an administrator, or IT, the cloud offers increased capabilities and significant cost savings that help deliver the best educational experiences possible. Nothing matches the convenience of the cloud, and with your students fully engaged and eager to learn, you’ll inspire future generations to innovate and do truly incredible things

Get started with Sync today!