Tag: Amazon Polly

Do you favor that points-earning credit card? Or stick with the same airline to rack up miles? These are examples of gamification in action. While the term is relatively new, gamification has been around as long as people have tried to make boring activities interesting. Humans have a natural desire to compete, be social, and gain rewards. Elearningindustry.com found that 67 percent of students feel gamified courses are more motivating than traditional ones. And with educators shifting to virtual or blended classrooms worldwide, it’s worth making the effort to create a gamified classroom. Here are four tips to mastering gamification in your classroom.

AWS EdStart Members and founders Long Qin of Singsound and Elnaz Sarraf of ROYBI are using artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize early language learning. Long, based out of Beijing, China, is dedicated to providing accessible and quality English education to every family throughout China. Elnaz, based out of San Francisco, CA, United States, is dedicated to changing the one-size-fits-all approach of our global education system.

At the AWS Public Sector Summit Online, Max Peterson, vice president of international sales for the public sector, spoke about our new reality responding to a global pandemic—and how customers who have taken steps to transform digitally are already benefiting from their progress. Through the lens of customers’ and partners’ experience, Max shared lessons learned and how to apply these lessons to your cloud journey. Those four key lessons? Move fast, have an agile platform, keep innovating, and think big. Read on for more.

State governments are currently experiencing a spike in the number of applications for social benefit programs. These programs serve millions of people every year to support healthcare and to help keep them out of poverty. To address the surge, agencies are looking at cloud-based services including artificial intelligence (AI), conversational bots, and call centers to improve the customer experience as well as workforce productivity, provide more visibility for agency leadership into program performance, and help reduce fraud, waste, and abuse.

The third episode 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 dove into how the cloud helps state and local government customers deliver critical services to citizens. Interviews featured in the podcast include the state of West Virginia (WV), Smartronix, and Los Angeles County Internal Services Department (LA County ISD). You can stream all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, iHeartRadio, and via RSS.

In 2012, Education Perfect (EP) wanted to use the cloud to access the necessary infrastructure that would allow EP to reach classrooms globally and rapidly scale. EP is an education technology (EdTech) organization that uses advanced algorithms and text-to-speech technology to improve learning through a library of lessons and assessments across multiple subject areas. Our mission is to use technology to provide learning tools and tailored content for educators and students, regardless of location.

In the United States, unemployment insurance claims are rising, with the current insured unemployment rate at 15.7%—the highest since the end of World War II. Many states are struggling with the volume of applications, causing legacy back-office systems to crash. Workforce West Va. identified three actions they could take to improve constituent services; many of these actions were enabled by 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.

University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust’s Breast Care Unit approached Redmoor Health to discuss innovative ways to improve patient engagement. Turning to social media, the Health Innovation Campus at Lancaster University, Redmoor Health, and the National Health Service (NHS), began using Facebook to reach the at-risk demographic (women 49+ years old). Through this collaboration, they saw the number of patients attending vital breast screening appointments increase by 13% – among the best in the country.

Last week at AWS re:Invent, students from a local Las Vegas high school and students who traveled in from the United Kingdom (UK) participated in an AWS Field Trip to get inspired and excited to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers through a day of fun, hands-on engagements with technology.