7th grade chatted about “the cloud” today – a name for data that is stored on the internet instead of on a local computer. When accessing the cloud, our computer becomes a window into this information, we see straight into the cloud and use different services (email, photo sharing sites, video sites, etc) to make sense of the data and put it together in a way that we understand.

Some companies want our entire computer experience to be linked into the cloud.  They offer tons of amazing features, like free storage for all your files, photo editing software, free content for projects you are creating, all in an effort to convince you to spend your time connected to the cloud and share your information.

There are 2 problems we uncovered with the idea of relying on the cloud:

  1. If you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t access cloud services and content, and
  2. The owner of the place your info is stored might decide to stop giving you access.

It turns out that we’ve already been relying on the cloud for much of what we do at school.  The blog posts that 7th grade did for American History exist in the cloud, as does our school’s email system and even our end-of-term report system.

Students agreed that the cloud is an exciting idea but also a little scary.  As always, if you want to keep something private, don’t put it onto a computer, and especially not up in the cloud!