Meister, Isaac and Solow-Niederman, Alicia, K-12 Edtech Cloud Service Inventory (January 15, 2014). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2014-2. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2378570 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2378570

“A wide range of cloud technologies are now available to K-12 educators, ranging from replacements for school- and district-maintained servers (infrastructure as a service, in which servers traditionally maintained by a school or district are “outsourced” to a cloud vendor), to a variety of software tools that users access from web browsers or mobile applications, which are in turn supported and powered by third-party companies. In such a crowded landscape, it can be challenging to understand the different kinds of available services. This inventory aims to provide a more concrete survey of the kinds of cloud computing technologies adopted in the K-12 context. It groups services according to the rough functionality they afford, from those common to any organization (collaboration and identity management), through the administrative office (student information systems), to the classroom (learning management and classroom management), and outside it (parent-teacher communication). The examples provided are meant to illustrate the kinds of cloud technology being developed in each class and are not exhaustive. In addition, it is important to recognize that the growing ubiquity of Internet access generally and of mobile devices specifically among students, parents and teachers makes it increasingly easy and desirable for cloud application developers to create services that transcend these boundaries.”