Dick Sblog

New computing architectures are increasingly important in today’s world in all sorts of ways. Perhaps if the financial regulators of the US and UK had had been running on their own computing grids, instead of relying on figures from the banks, they may have noticed the staggering insecurity of the complex financial ‘innovations’ that earned massive bonuses for the legalised gamblers in the banks but have left most of us with a sour taste and several holes in our wallets.

If only.

Anyway, what’s that got to do with education? Well there’s an issue about educating people to see through the crap and look at the reality of economy that’s based on gambling but doesn’t value manufacturing and long term research. That’s one thing.

Another thing is that new modelling and simulation techniques, often based on grid computing, have a major role to play in helping to save us from ourselves. The UK’s Grid Computing Now! project (a Knowledge Transfer Network funded by the Technology Strategy Board) is running a competition on the subject of “Grid Computing for a Greener Planet”. So if you, or someone you know, has an interest in programming and a desire to save the world, take a look at the competition details on the project’s website.

A third thing relates to the software you are running. The era of licensed software is drawing to a close. Increasingly you’ll get your applications served down the wire on a subscription basis (which may be free of course, like Google). What does this mean for schools? Well, there’s a good side and a bad side. The increasing implementation of virtual learning environments runs the risk of squeezing out small, innovative educational sofware developers in favour of those software houses that do deals to be included in the VLE offerings. However, on the other side of the fence, the availability of ‘cloud computing services, like those from Amazon, means that smaller software houses can deploy their software as a service anywhere in the world without having to invest in their own infrastructures. The opportunity, for those whe can sieze it, is immense.