Category: Education

The AWS Educate program has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, expanding the number of students and educators globally who can use its free tools, resources, and AWS Promotional Credits to gain cloud computing skills and knowledge. AWS Educate’s four job families (Software Developer, Cloud Architect, Analytics and Big Data, and Operations/Support Engineer) all have newly translated content and subtitled videos available for students ages 14 and up* as well as educators.

At the University of Oklahoma, we asked ourselves: Can Amazon Alexa help engage college students and enhance their educational experience? How will students utilize voice technology as they graduate and move into their careers? Within the University of Oklahoma IT department, we aim to affect the student experience on campus in more ways than just delivering technology. We have found that the more a student is engaged on campus, the more likely they are to graduate. Technology innovation, like Alexa, will play a major role in that mission.

Spring is around the corner, and that means AWS Summits have arrived! Our global Summits bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Catch these events in major cities around the world, where you can join technologists from government, education, and nonprofits who want to discover how AWS can help them innovate quickly and deliver flexible, reliable solutions at scale.

The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is now open! The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is a global program recognizing how local and regional governments are innovating on behalf of their citizens around the globe. Last year, we opened up the competition to school districts who are using the cloud to enrich learning, help teachers reach more students, and improve school or district operations. This year, we are adding a new category to the Challenge: We Power Tech.

We are announcing a similar change for Amazon WorkSpaces. Educational institutions can save up to 14% per month on Amazon WorkSpaces by leveraging license discounts from Microsoft for Qualified Education Users. This equates to a $3.52 per user/month savings, and $0.03 per user/hour for WorkSpaces. You can take advantage of this discount if you qualify, based on Microsoft Licensing Terms and Documentation. If you think you may qualify, please contact us so that we can enable the discount for you. There is no upfront investment or financial commitment.

NJEdge has built a state-wide fiber optic research and education network that is available to all NJEdge member schools. In collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), member institutions can now leverage existing NJEdge connections, or create new ones, and use AWS Direct Connect at a significantly reduced expense to connect to private AWS resources. NJEdge, a Research and Education Network (REN), is dedicated to creating a better world by providing statewide advanced networking, access to optimal technology solutions and services, and insight and expertise in information technologies.

Twitter has hundreds of millions of active users each month and supports multiple languages on their platform. These users engage with nonprofits, need citizen services, and learn at schools, universities, and other educational institutions. As a consequence, public sector organizations look to social media not only to communicate with the public, but also to gain insights about the citizens, volunteers, and students they serve. Wouldn’t it be great to know if people had positive or negative opinions about your city, school, nonprofit, or organization? What are they talking about and how many other people share that view?

The University of Arizona addressed the challenge of creating a more efficient and agile IT operation by deciding to go all-in on the cloud. After initial success in migrating their Kuali Research Administration system, they created a roadmap and began migrating their PeopleSoft application environments, including Enterprise Learning (EL), Human Resources (HR), and Student Administration (SA) to AWS. The University of Arizona has 42,000 students with more than 300 majors. To be responsive to their students, they are in the process of migrating over 95 enterprise services to the cloud.

With the availability of Wi-Fi and Chromebooks in the classroom, students are better positioned than ever before to take advantage of digital learning tools. However, Chromebooks don’t easily support demanding software, such as CAD/CAM and other tools needed for Science Technology Education and Math (STEM) classes. So while a classroom may have ubiquitous access to the internet, teachers who require more robust desktop applications and software still find themselves reserving time in school computer labs.

The cloud enables organizations to achieve their missions faster, speed up innovation, and save costs by scaling up quickly without the lengthy and costly process of acquiring additional hardware. Although more public sector organizations are adopting the cloud for mission-critical workloads, misconceptions about vendor lock-in still exist.