Tag: K12

Recalling back to when he was a teacher, Andy Wolfenbarger, Supervisor of Student Information Systems at the Department of Information Technology Services at Prince William County Public Schools, was pulling triple duty – coaching football and tennis on top of teaching his four high school classes. With grades due, Andy had a small block of time after school to get them in. But unbeknownst to him, the switch in the network closet next to him needed to be upgraded. In the middle of inputting his grades, the system went dark.

If we expect teachers to teach, we have to give them the resources to be effective. From school supplies and planning time to professional development and connectivity, when a teacher needs the functionality to better serve students, the answer should be yes.

When upgrading a school district’s infrastructure, the administration thinks about the physical buildings as well as the IT. In 2018, Portland Public Schools began tackling both. The district is visibly renovating many of its high schools, but behind the scenes, they also migrated to the cloud, increasing both performance and capacity for their users.

From Cape Town, South Africa to Herndon, Virginia, Amazonians hosted over 140 events across the globe with over 1,760 employees volunteering their time to teach an Hour of Code to over 28,000 students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Employees across Amazon volunteered for Hour of Code to help inspire the workforce of tomorrow.

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.

The Canberra Grammar School Code Cadets are a group of students with a passion for technology and applying their knowledge towards interesting projects beyond the classroom. The Code Cadets have been working with AWS technology for many years, being long-time participants in GovHack, which AWS has supported in the past – and are planning to use AWS Educate in their Year 9 and 10 elective software development courses next year.

In September, we honored National Campus Safety Awareness Month and payed extra mind to the importance of keeping students and teachers safe. But, the focus on this important topic is critical year-round.

CrisisGo, an AWS Technology Partner, is dedicated to creating safe classrooms and empowering people to take an active role in keeping themselves and others safe. Its mobile platform is designed to enhance school safety through alerting, communication, and incident-management features, equipping anyone with access to a computer or phone with emergency tools and resources. The team has been particularly focused on protecting both mental and physical health at schools and universities.

The California Cloud Workforce Project (“CA Cloud”), a consortium of 19 LA County community colleges and their sister high schools, today announced they will offer a Cloud Computing Certificate beginning in the fall of 2018. The CA Cloud curriculum was designed collaboratively by faculty at Santa Monica College (SMC) and AWS Educate, with the support of subject matter experts from AWS and other LA-based tech companies to equip students with cloud skills needed for careers in the tech industry.