School on Cloud: Towards a paradigm shift

Abstract

This paper presents the basic concept of the EU Network School on Cloud: Namely, that present conditions require a new teaching and learning paradigm based on the integrated dimension of education, when considering the use of cloud computing. In other words, it is suggested that there is a need for an integrated approach which is simultaneously pedagogic (i.e. new role of teachers), technical/technological (i.e. use of the internet), administrative (i.e. new role of school administrators), social (i.e. a different disposition of parents towards school), political (i.e. a different approach of government to school) and cultural (i.e. new role of students), being in dialectic harmony and respecting all aspects of teaching and learning, an integral part of which are pupils, teachers and school administrators. As a result, the principal tasks in the area at the interface between education and cloud technology, which are presented in this paper, are to determine and describe the nature of the basic education stakeholders: i-Students, i-Teachers and i-Administrators.