Cloud media as an alternative aid for Research and Education

T. Pitikaris a, N. Kanellos b, A. Dalianis b, N. Carrera c ,Pitikaris Euangelosd.

a

TEI of Crete, Department of Applied Informatics, Artificial Intelligent Laboratory, Heraklion ,Crete, Greece
b

University of Athens, Department of Informatics, Athens, Greece London School of Economics, Law Department , London, UK
d

Department of Political Science, University of Crete

ABSTRACT IT has changed us profoundly. It has changed our culture, it has changed our language, and it has even changed the way we think. This tsunami of changes started with the invention of the first PC and now days continues with new emerging trends, with the latest being cloud computing, a.k.a. the cloud and its most recent application cloud media. We regard cloud media as an extension of the cloud computing; the combination of cloud computing implementation and provision methods with major web 2.0 applications such as social media, blogs and wikis. At the present time there are a number of services that bring functionality to IT world via Web-based applications. On the one hand, applications such as Facebook and other social media have changed the way we used to interact with our environment. On the other hand, cloud computing acting as an evolutionary successor of Grid Computing is not only focused on people but on many areas that require information interpretation and storage as well, such as financial simulation, business etc, thus enabling cloud media to affect not only IT itself but more importantly ITs relationship with the information society. Through the use cloud media, a new environment has emerged, concerning the education and research area. This new environment facilitates both the accumulation and dispersing of collective knowledge (Crowd Knowledge) and the interactive distance learning education methods. Furthermore, it may bring up new research opportunities in the area of economics, marketing and behavioral science. Towards this direction, many new applications have been developed and are already in use by major academic institutions. For example Moodle and E-class are major tools used for distance learning. In addition, MITs open-class functioned as a reference point for many universities for open distribution of knowledge. Moreover, Google Scholar types of applications greatly facilitate the search effort applied by millions of people daily and others such as Virtual Lab changed the way everyday

perform any kind of research through experimentation and the validation and distribution of the results. These kinds of apps differ from the ones mentioned above since they do not only store and distribute knowledge but they provide researchers a new way to generate it. In this paper we will go through the cloud media technologies and we will study the education and research ecosystem that dictates the ways in which academic societies, research laboratories and other knowledge institutions operate and interact. We will argue over how cloud media can ameliorate the above ecosystem and we will conclude with future opportunities that may follow the adoption of cloud media trends in the areas of study. Keywords: Cloud Media, Research, Change, Organizational Behavior, IT, Social Media, Education, Web 2.0