Category: Education

To celebrate Computer Science Education week and the Global Hour of Code, AWS Educate has launched a new experience for students between the ages of 14-17. Students now have access to a new website experience and three new badges with learning content to discover and grow their cloud expertise. The website offers a dynamic, streamlined navigational experience so students can easily dive into interactive challenges and hands-on activities. Teachers can also access supplemental guides for the challenges that map to core computer science principles, enabling both students and teachers to explore, invent, and build.

Fife Public Schools provides a device for every kid in the district. But like many schools with 1:1 programs, they ran into challenges when trying to provide specialty software programs to students. CTE (Careers and Technical Education) classes were using specialized applications like CAD, Project Lead the Way, and Photoshop – all programs that were only accessible via computer labs during school hours. Fife began exploring how they could offer students access to these programs at any time on their 1:1 devices.

During the first week of December, students all around the world will learn computer science during the annual Hour of Code event led by Code.org. It’s an important effort, aimed at helping kids from all backgrounds learn to code and work toward successful careers making use of computer science skills.

Today at re:Invent, the AWS Public Sector Breakfast focused on tech for good. Read below for the key takeaways.

AWS Educate released significant enhancements to its job board and career-management tools for members to create a pipeline of cloud-ready students for companies that use AWS. The program, available at no cost to students and educators around the world, is also launching the AWS Educate Interview Accelerator in the U.S. and then followed by additional countries, putting qualified students in the fast lane to job opportunities.

RoboGen™ is an open-source educational and research platform for the co-evolution of robot bodies and brains. It was developed at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL led by Professor Dario Floreano with the focus on evolving robots, which has a capability to introduce new body morphology and actuation that have never been imagined before. The team’s goal is to develop a low-cost, simple and versatile platform for research, answering questions around embodied cognition, crossing the reality gap, and learning via Darwinian principles.

Coventry University’s logo includes “the Phoenix,” which mirrors the university’s ability to reinvent itself. Coventry University has been on a continuous cycle of reinvention over the past 175 years – from its origins as the Coventry School of Design in 1843 through to its growth as a technical college in 1902. Having gained university status in 1992, Coventry’s reinvention has led it to become the top modern university in the UK.

Students, educators, and researchers are key drivers of technological innovation and the backbone of modern economies. The European research community is using AWS technologies to further invent and advance scientific discovery. A few customers who are leading the way in education and research in Europe are the University of Liverpool and the University of York.

Exams can be stressful for students, but the performance of their testing platform should not be a concern. Students expect the same level of tech they are used to in their daily lives, so universities must keep pace. In 2010, the founders of UNIwise, at the time working in managing positions at Aarhus University in Denmark, identified a student desire to bring and use their own computers for exams. At that time, no technology was available that would prevent cheating and plagiarism during digital exams.

The countdown is on until re:Invent 2018! This guide is designed to help public sector attendees plan their experience and identify breakout sessions and events of interest. It is intended to complement the re:Invent app, which will help attendees navigate the conference onsite.