Low-threshold access to digital educational content

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and in close collaboration with the nationwide excellence network MINT-EC, the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering is developing a “HPI School Cloud”. It is designed to provide a technical basis for enabling students and teachers to use modern, digital teaching and learning materials in every class, just as apps can be used on smartphones and tablets.

The Hasso Plattner Institute launched the HPI Schul-Cloud-Project in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and  MINT-EC, the nationwide network of schools recognized as fostering excellence in the  disciplines of mathematics and science. The cloud infrastructure designed by the Hasso Plattner Institute will help students, teachers and parents gain easy access to learning and teaching material, which is available to everyone, everywhere, at any time. Since digital media and technologies provide valuable tools for all subjects, they must be made available to all students. Thesetupof a school cloud provides a sustainable solution in giving students the possibility to use the newest and most professionally maintained programs comprehensively.

The basic idea of the HPI Schul-Cloud is to free educational content from closed systems, textbooks and individual computers. Instead, the educational content is made available web-based via distributed servers in data centers. Thus, the access from every location and the reasonable use in the classroom are facilitated immensely by the HPI School Cloud.

Experts take care of the updates for soft- and hardware, which are obtained from the cloud, and of the secured configuration. All programs and user accounts are located in a computer center and can be provided via the internet on request. For schools this means there is no need to buy PC’s and install, configure and administer networks anymore. Students and teachers merely need internet access, web-enabled display and input devices as well as appropriate authorization, to gain access to the digital teaching and learning offers.

Providing the HPI school cloud is a central infrastructure project in the field of general education and a significant and necessary step in promoting and enabling the use of digital media and offers in daily school life nationwide.

• access to teaching and learning materials anywhere and at any time
• no (more) need for expensive computer labs
• no expensive soft- and hardware maintenance by teachers
• allows students and teachers access to state-of-the-art-technology
• high level of digital media security due to maintenance by experts
• revival of the market for high quality digital teaching and learning offers
• allows direct user evaluation of digital teaching and learning offers
• encourages autonomous learning
• enable all participants (also students) to provide learning material
• gives schools the opportunity to  enhance the quality of lessons  and simultaneously reduce their costs
• makes the annoying lugging of heavy books history!