Toni Duke
The challenges of the “pen drives”, a type of flash drive that
Thornburg (2009) refers to, are one reason why that type of file storage technology is about to
expire. At the time of Thornburg’s 2009 article, the challenges of the pen flash
drive storage devices had a high cost, limited storage capacity, and a
limited life (“number of read/write cycles”) (Thornburg, 2009, p. 4). In
addition to those cited limitations, the need to physically keep up with and
carry all of one’s important information, photos, music, etc. with them limits
the reliability of a flash drive, not to mention the opportunities for
corruption and breaking. Now, 4 years later, the cost has drastically decreased, the storage capacity has drastically increased, and the number of read/write cycles is seemingly unlimited. (I have used a 16GB flash drive for the past 4 1/2 years, throughout my doctoral studies, and it is still going strong...although I often utilize my cloud storage.)
When educators consider all of the pitfalls of dealing with
issuing information on flash drives, the growing use of cloud storage becomes a
more attractive, productive use for storage options. There are several cloud
storage options available – most of them free for a limited amount of storage. (See list posted to right for Top 10 recommended storage sites). The benefits of a cloud storage account are convenience, portability, and
ease of use. Users are able to access any personally stored information,
pictures, music, etc. from any computer, tablet or smartphone with internet
access.
Strickland discusses the potential problems or challenges of
utilizing a cloud storage alternative as “reliability and security” (Strickland,
n.d.). If the cloud storage companies are not able to maintain safety and
security of customers’ information from hackers and data encryption, they will
not be in business long as there are several companies competing for their
customers. The only improvement I would recommend for the cloud technology industry
would be the security feature, and the continuance of free storage space to
users who refer additional customers, as offered by Dropbox.
References:
Cloud storage finder (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cloudstoragefinder.com/
Strickland, J. (n.d.). How cloud storage works. Retrieved
from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing/cloud-storage3.htm
Thornburg, D.D. (2009). Current trends in educational technology. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.
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ReplyDeleteI chose to use floppy disks as my topic to cloud storage. We do not use those anymore, but use flash drives on a regular basis. We have not even looked at cloud storage in my district yet.
ReplyDeleteMelissa, are you creating your project on cloud storage or just the posting for this module? My project will be on a different topic; this was just for this module.
DeleteMy district uses Google Docs for just about everything. We share documents via Google Drive and use storage on My Big Campus for professional development mini-courses. We're quite advanced technologically to be such a small, growing district.
Cloud storage seems very interesting, I can definitely see the benefits of using cloud storage, as you stated, you can definitely view information from anywhere as long as there is Internet access and that's always a plus. I can also see the disadvantage where you mentioned about security. Besides, security, it seems to be a great storage tool.
ReplyDeleteI like the connection you made between the flash drive and cloud storage. The flash drive has reached critical mass and its use will most likely continue to wane as more people subscribe to the emerging technology-cloud storage. I rarely use a flash drive anymore. I'll use it as a backup, in case I happen to be in an area without a Wi-Fi connection or to store larger files so I don't use all the space in my Dropbox. And I never use them with my students because they can save their work on the school's shared drive or to the school Web page. It's hard to imagine what the next storage technology will be.
ReplyDeleteI like both cloud storage and flash drives I usually carry my 32GB flash drive but also keep files on a free cloud storage service. I like the flexibility of both.
ReplyDelete