UDC: 378.091.12.011.3-051 USING CLOUD COMPUTING FOR STEM EDUCATION IN GENERAL SCHOOL

The article is devoted to the problems of using cloud services for the STEMeducation support in a general school. There is considered the foreign experience of solving the main issues on the implementation of STEM-oriented approach at all educational levels with the help of information and communication technologies. The purpose of the article is to analyze the foreign experience of using cloud computing services for the STEM-education support of a general school and highlight the main problems in this process. It is concluded that STEM-education is one of the most important areas of development education system and education reform, which is explained by the significant demand of the world labor market for specialists in the STEM industries. To ensure effective implementation of the STEM-oriented approach in the study of the general educational institution at all education levels is the use of information and communication technologies, in particular cloud services.


Introduction
Nikirk, M. (2012) [9] provides such a definition: STEM-education is a transdisciplinary teaching approach that enables students to use the project method to independently solve real problems that may arise in bit and teaching tasks set by the teacher, in which the teacher carries out the role of facilitator. Researcher recommends such strategies for the effective implementation of the STEM-oriented approach in the generalschool:  demonstrate graphs at the beginning of students' tasks, etc., since visualization facilitates faster perception of the material than read the text;  begin with an explanation of the purpose, which should be based on objectivity;  after explaining the goal it is necessary to provide students with concrete and abstract concepts to be realized using examples from real life so that students can understand the connection with abstract concepts;  use ICTs to provide interactive educational process, namely, to search for and present educational resources; creation and application of virtual laboratories, electronic educational games, software, blogs, etc.;  teach of the behavior and business etiquette that meets the needs of business and entrepreneurship; presentation of data using charts and graphs using graphical editors and presentations;  focus not on the teacher-centered approach, but on the learner-centered approach;  focus not on the teacher group-work, but on the team-work;  promote the development an educational environment, in which the core values are students creative and independent thinking;  engage students through interactive curriculum; teach them to evaluate and efficient to use the technology, including ICTs, for learning and self-education;  use method «peer-to-peer», that is to engage students as teachers, project leader, problem solvers, problem solvers, this should promote them leadership skills.
The above recommendations point to the ICTs' special role, in particular, cloud services, for the STEM-education support in the general school.
An important is to create ICTs' centers support for the STEM-education, STEM Alliance, or Association, etc. For examples: The All-Ukrainian Scientific and Methodological Virtual STEM Center of the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (available at: http://stemua.science); European Union STEM Alliance in Genious Education and industry (available at: http://www.stemalliance.eu); American National School Boards Association (available at: https://www.nsba.org), etc.
STEM-educational environment of the All-Ukrainian Scientific and Methodological Virtual STEM Center consists with three components:  Information and technological component (educational programs, methodical materials, virtual laboratories);  Dimensional and material component (equipments and software for leading local and foreign producers);  Social and personal component (students of general schools and out-ofschool educational institutions, students of higher educational institutions, scientists and researchers, etc.). Environment of the European Union STEM Alliance has a similar structure to the All-Ukrainian Scientific and Methodological Virtual STEM Center.
Maïté Debry and Dr. Agueda Gras-Velazquez, etc. [7] consider that STEM Alliance should be special attention to cloud services for the STEM-education support. They note that use ICTs will to enable students in active, interactive and collaborative learning; increase their interest and motivation to study STEM disciplines. Scientists are separate, among cloud services, which provide interactive and collaborative learning activities for students and teachers: Microsoft Office 365, Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, Padlet, Skype, etc.
In this case, they see such problems [7]: creating formal and informal on-line courses in areas of STEM, and engaging students, teachers and specialists to this courses; continuous development of teacher's information and communication competence (digital competence) for their promotion of the STEM-education learning environment through the using ICTs; selection necessary ICTs for the educational process organization, etc. They propose conducting teaching courses for teachers to solve these problems, the goals of which are to teach them to select and use ICTs, in particular cloud services, in accordance with the forms, methods of teaching and the content of the teaching they teach. Scientists point out the following popular courses in EU countries: «Teach Scape» and Knowledge Delivery System (KDS); Massive open online courses (MOOC), such as, for example, European Schoolnet Academy (available at: http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu); Microsoft Imagine Academy (available at: https://member.imagineacademy.microsoft.com (English); (http://kubg.edu.ua/struktura/pidrozdili/ndl-informatizatsiji-osviti/proekty/mi crosoft-imagine-academy.html (Ukrainian)), etc.
Scientists especially note the role MOOC for the development of teachers' digital competence, which aim is development them skills to use ICTs in professional activity according to global priorities of education. For example, European Schoolnet Academy courses «Boosting a Sense of Initiative and Entrepreneurship in Your Students»; «Opening minds to STEM careers», «Opening Schools to STEM Careers», etc. Scientists explain the effectiveness of such courses because of the fact that they involve a large number of teachers from different countries, which impacts exchange of positive experiences on the use of ICTs between them, to find out common problems in education that require discussion and decision, etc. [10].Teachers research different ideas about the forms, methods and means of the STEM-oriented approach support in such courses.
These courses are usually the result of international projects aimed at solving current educational problems and meeting the needs of the information society. For example, course «Opening Schools to STEM Careers» is the result of three projects: SYSTEMIC (available at: http://www.ngofund.org.pl/systemic-projects), which was a joint initiative of Ministries of Education in Europe and employers, who have a common goal -increasing the interest of young people in STEM careers; Scientix (available at: http://www.scientix.eu), which provided for the creation of a community of teachers and specialists for the support and development of STEM education in Europe and the cooperation of teachers, researchers, political and other professionnals; STEM Alliance (available at: http://www.stemalliance.eu), the purpose of which was to identify shortcomings in the development of Science and Mathematics Education in Europe and provide suggestions for its improvement [6].
In addition to the above, scientists are call attention to the potential of cloud services for the creation and use of games in order to increase the students motivation to study and improve the educational process of disciplines STEMeducation, such as Scratch (available at: http://scratch.mit.edu), Microsoft Kodu (available at: www.kodugamelab.com), Minecraft (available at: https://minecraft. net/en-us/download), World of Warcraft (available at: https://worldofwar craft.com), etc. [12; 7; 6]. In order to explain the role of such services in the educational process of the general school and the training of teachers to use them in their professional activities within the European Schoolnet Academy, three rounds of the mass open online course were developed: «Games in Schools first round», «Games in Schools 2 nd round», «Games in Schools 3 rd round».
The main issues that are considered and addressed in these courses are: «Why Use Computer Games at Schools?»; «How to use cloud services to increase students motivation to study and improve the educational process of different disciplines?», etc. So, in the course «Opening Schools to STEM Careers» offered a range of computer games and cloud services to create them. Tutors of the course are conditionally divided into the following: which do not necessarily have an educational purpose, but can actually be used for thematic training on such issues as, for example, programming, gravity, planet, construction, and many others; which have a clear pedagogical orientation and designed to help students study in various fields of science for cross-curriculum learning.
At the same time, researchers are call special attention to cloud service Scratch, which was created in Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [6]. The work on this project focused on helping students develop critical, creative thinking, individual and cooperative learning and teaching work in the classroom, encouraging joint educational activities, an interdisciplinary approach to the learning process with ICT, and others [6]. The service Scratch can be used for the following purposes: teaching and learning students for programming, algebra and geometry problems solving by students, presentation of the educational projects results of different educational disciplines, creative solution for submitting materials as a result of scientific research, and others.
Regarding issues and problems of the cloud services using for the STEMeducation support have facilitated the establishment of a number of international projects, for example: The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE, available at: https://www.globe.gov), Group-Based Cloud Computing for STEM Education Project (GbCC, available at: https://www.gbccstem. com), School on the Cloud (available at: http://www.schoolonthecloud.net), etc.
The GLOBE (started in 1995) is an international science and education program that provides students, teachers and scientists all over the world with the opportunity to participate in data collection and scientific, educational process of Science and Mathematics Education, to promote understanding of the Earth's system and the global environment. The cloud for this project (created in 2012) is Infrastructure, which provides the exchange of data between its registered participants, joint work on scientific research, which are offered by educational institutions of different countries, etc.
The GLOBE Program Operational Structure consists of three levels ( Figure 1): Primary Activities, Support Infrastructure and Underpinning Operations).

Figure 1. The GLOBE Program Operational Structure [11]
Primary Activities includes such components:  Education: development and support of events for teachers and trainers in the environmental sciences field; communication with teachers, exchange of best practices and provision of tools; facilitating the students learning, students cooperation with the community GLOBE.
 Science: engaging scientists, which are professionals in areas of STEM, to the network of the project community GLOBE; coordination of scientific activity and educational relations; organization of communication of project participants with scientists, sharing best practices and providing feedback to schools.
 International: engaging and supporting international partners, sharing best practices among international coordinators and partners, creating conditions for education and teacher training, which are involved with the project GLOBE.
Support Infrastructure includes such components: -Technology Systems: Websites development for GLOBE, providing cloudbased training support, data visualization project pupils and students GLOBE; -Communication Systems: providing constant support for communication between schools, registered in the project, and scientists and partners; regular news reporting about projects, etc.; -Fundraising/Development: identification of financing sources for relevant projects under GLOBE and a strategic plan for infrastructure support.
Underpinning Operations, which cover management systems, whose mission is to maximize the effectiveness of all activities in GLOBE, providing adequate Project GbCC aimed at implementing a research approach using cloud services to create and study technologies, and materials that support STEM-education and training. The GbCC sites have such goals:  Distribution approaches to training and certification for teachers in STEMeducation;  Monitoring results of using cloud services for the STEM-education support in the general school;  Formation students «Computational thinking» in areas of STEM, which is understood as the processing of data with the help of ICT in order to improve their analysis and synthesize the material presented by students to the project site;  Raising the level of students' knowledge about the STEM profession; motivate students to pursue appropriate education pathways occupations in STEM areas; development STEM skills, promote students critical thinking, etc.
It is worth noting the project «School on the Cloud» [5], funded with the support of the European Commission within the lifelong learning program. The project network will bring together 57 partners, 18 European countries, 10 schools, 21 universities, companies, non-governmental organizations, national authorities, research centers, associations and adult education providers. Within the project, cloud services are offered by companies Apple, Google, Microsoft, SAM Labs, etc.
It should be noted that in all the projects and studies described above, a special role is assigned to Cloud-based Simulations and Cloud-based Distributed Network Simulation Environment for students to carry out scientific research, in particular in areas of STEM. For examples, Google Maps, NetLogo, HubNet, etc.
According to the reviewed projects and studies, we can distinguish the main problems with using ICTs, in particular, cloud services, for the STEM-education support in the general school, and possible solution them (Table 1). So, in light of the projects described above and the issues that are find out, cloud services help teachers to solve problems of the balance between the content of the curriculum and the practice, between the students attendance of classes and their interests, and the rapid ICTs development and their effective use in educational process, etc.

Conclusions
The STEM-education is one of the most important areas for the development and education reforming, due to the high demand of the global labor market for specialists in the STEM industries.
To ensure the effective implementation of the STEM-oriented approach to the educational process of the general school at all levels of education is the use of ICT, particular cloud services.
The main problems that arise during this process:  Creating formal and informal STEM online courses through ICT and involving students, teachers and professionals.
 Development of teachers' information and communication competence in order to facilitate the continuous improvement of the STEM education environment through the use ICTs, in particular cloud services.
 Selection necessary ICT for the educational process organization, etc.
Solutions to these problems are:  Creation and organization of Massive open online courses for teachers providing an opportunity for anyone, who wants to acquire certain knowledge and develop their skills in ICT teaching, regardless of their qualifications, pedagogical experience, etc.
 Schools participation in educational projects aimed at promoting the development of teachers' skills and abilities to use ICTs, in particular cloud services, in their professional activities in accordance with the world's priority areas of education.