AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Customer Solutions

FamilyBookForm

Social emotional learning: Using cloud technology to support student learning

Research shows that social emotional learning (SEL) increases student engagement at school, increases academic achievement, and helps students to be more successful in all aspects of life. FamilyBookForm, an AWS EdStart Member, aims to encourage SEL through their online book creation tool that allows K12 students to interview members of their family or community to collect spoken stories, in any language. The tool uses speech-to-text voice recognition technology and is powered by the AWS Cloud.

Alexa Edu SXSW winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Amazon Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge

For the first-ever Amazon Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge, Amazon Web Services (AWS) teamed up with SXSW EDU to challenge U.S.-based EdTechs on how they would use Alexa to transform education. Out of six finalists, AWS recognized two winners: judges’ choice SayKid, the recipient of $50,000 in AWS Promotional Credit, and people’s choice VOGO Voice, the recipient of $25,000 in AWS Promotional Credit. The other four finalists will receive $10,000 in AWS Promotional Credit.

Fix This episode 14 - Mission critical cloud: Remote education

Mission critical cloud: Remote education, on the Fix This podcast

The second part of the Mission Critical Cloud Fix This podcast mini-series by Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), is now live. We explored remote education with the Los Angeles County Unified School District (LAUSD), Athabasca University, and Pearson.

Photo by person on computer looking COVID-19; Patrick Assalé on Unsplash

Updates and early lessons from our COVID-19 HPC Consortium research partners

The concept of a COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium emerged from a roundtable discussion at the White House in March and included input from industry, government, and academic leaders. Following the announcement of the consortium, AWS has been collaborating with teams on a growing number of projects to provide cloud computing resources from AWS. I want to share three early learnings and insights into some of the innovative projects on which we are collaborating with the world’s leading researchers.

Streetlives

Creating more customer-centric social service experiences with the power of the cloud

Streetlives, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, uses technology to host a community-built web app for people who are homeless, communities considered vulnerable, and social service providers in New York City (NYC). Streetlives is a community-built mobile website that enables people who are homeless or in poverty to easily find, rate, and recommend social services across New York City. Adam Bard, Founder of Streetlives, explains how AWS Promotional Credits helps the organization deliver up-to-date, validated social service information to the communities of New York City.

man writing on notepad next to laptop

Providing immediate support today and operational resiliency for tomorrow

Across recent customer engagements, our teams have seen an increase in requests for support in four key use cases: remote workforce and productivity, citizen engagement, data management and analytics, and operational resilience and business continuity. Today I want to share a few stories of success where customers have implemented AWS services to address these use cases. They address four of the most urgent IT issues facing public sector customers in the crisis.

CyberPatient

Medical students learn through virtual clinical rotations

CyberPatient, a Canadian startup, provides an online, digital learning environment to help medical students around the globe practice skills virtually before they ever enter into clinical rotations or step foot into a hospital. In the platform, students can interact with virtual patients and work through scenarios that mimic real life. As more students turn to virtual learning, CyberPatient’s platform is being offered to medical students at no cost.

headphones and laptop

Chatbots and call centers: Connecting with citizens during critical times

Chatbots and modern call centers provide governments with an efficient way to connect with citizens during critical times. Governments, health systems, and educational institutions are responsible for communicating and maintaining information portals regarding public safety, health and human services, emergency services, social services, and more. Now more than ever, communities are turning to their public sector organizations for up-to-date information. Read on to learn from organizations across industries and how they have scaled their services to meet increased demand.

headphones on laptop

Optimizing your call center to improve citizen services with the cloud

Public sector organizations are experiencing a high volume of requests for information ranging from health to finances to municipal services. At a time when in-person interaction is limited, citizens can call into contact centers to get the insights they need to make real-time decisions about their health and safety. Many organizations are turning to the cloud to quickly scale and deploy a contact center. But, understanding your cloud contact center at granular level can help better serve your constituents.

Academic medical research

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance medical research

Academic medical centers (AMCs) are under pressure to reduce costs, innovate at scale, and improve operational performance. To do this, they’re turning to the cloud. Two AWS Partner Network (APN) Public Sector Partners used the cloud to create solutions for AMCs that use large datasets to help advance medical research and analyze genomic data. Learn how these two partners are building solutions in the cloud to help AMCs further their mission.