Top re:Invent 2021 announcements for K12 education

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced over 85 new services and features at re:Invent 2021, with something to offer for every industry, including K12 education. These new services and features unlock new use cases and lower the barrier to entry for schools looking to adopt cloud technology to better serve their students, parents, and staff. Read on for highlights of some of the key AWS announcements from re:Invent 2021 that can help K12 education:

Amazon AppStream 2.0 enhances remote learning
Amazon AppStream 2.0 made two new announcements ahead of re:Invent 2021: elastic fleets and Linux application streaming. AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, non-persistent desktop and application streaming service that allows students and teachers to use any device—Chromebooks, Macs, or PCs, at school or at home—to access the applications they need for learning that would typically only be accessible in the school’s computer lab. Students can access legacy and resource intensive applications from home for various curricula like science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); career and technical education (CTE); media and art; and more.

• Elastic fleets are a serverless fleet type that lets you stream applications to your end users from an AWS-managed pool of streaming instances without needing to predict usage or create and manage scaling policies. Get to know more about Elastic fleets.

• With Linux application streaming, you can now use AppStream 2.0 to stream Linux applications and desktops to your users. You can greatly lower the total streaming cost for classes that use applications like MATLAB, Eclipse, Firefox, PuTTY, and others that can be migrated from Windows to Linux. Explore Linux application streaming with AppStream 2.0.

AWS Private 5G provides reliable connectivity at school and home
AWS Private 5G is a managed service that makes it simple to deploy, operate, and scale your own private cellular network, with all required hardware and software provided by AWS. At school, AWS Private 5G can be used to supplement Wi-Fi with private cellular networks, so schools can deliver reliable campus connectivity. Offsite, private cellular can cover traditionally underserved students who lack broadband access at home, providing a digital lifeline for remote learning. There are no upfront fees or per-device costs with AWS Private 5G, and customers pay only for the network capacity and throughput they request. Learn more about AWS Private 5G.

Machine learning for everyone, regardless of experience
Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab is a no cost, no setup service that allows users to learn and experiment with machine learning (ML). All you need to get started is a valid email address; no AWS account necessary. SageMaker Studio Lab is a great way for students and teachers to get hands-on ML experience with Jupyter notebooks without worrying about infrastructure set up or configuration. Check out all the features of SageMaker Studio Lab.

Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a new capability of Amazon SageMaker that lets business analysts create accurate ML models and generate predictions using a visual, point-and-click interface—no coding required. SageMaker Canvas helps analysts —regardless of their technical skill—create accurate machine learning models from disparate datasets. If you’re interested in using ML to generate predictions and insight from student and academic data, SageMaker Canvas can help get you started without needing to be a technical expert. Dive deeper into SageMaker Canvas.

Protect applications and student data on VMware with AWS Backup
AWS Backup support for VMware enables you to centrally protect your on-premises VMware and VMware Cloud on AWS environments alongside AWS services. You can restore your VMware backups to your on-premises data centers and on VMware Cloud on AWS to meet your data recovery needs. Using AWS Backup, schools now have an AWS-native way to protect critical applications and student data hosted on VMware. By backing up data to AWS, schools can achieve enhanced data durability, availability, and security with cost-effective, scalable cloud storage. Learn more about AWS Backup for VMware.

Build web and mobile apps—no cloud or AWS expertise required
AWS Amplify Studio is a visual development environment that lets you more simply build complete web and mobile apps. With Amplify Studio, you can quickly build an app backend, create rich user interface (UI) components, and connect a UI to the backend with minimal coding. If your school is looking for a simple way to create custom applications, perhaps for currently manual processes or simple create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) use cases, Amplify Studio can help. Amplify Studio exports all UI and infrastructure artifacts as code, so you can maintain full control over your app design and behavior—no cloud or AWS expertise necessary. Read more about everything you can do with AWS Amplify Studio.

Run analytics in seconds without configuring data warehouse clusters
Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically provisions and scales data warehouse capacity to deliver high performance for demanding and unpredictable workloads. This makes it simple for you to run analytics at scale in seconds to gain rapid insights without the need to configure and manage your data warehouse clusters. If you’re looking for a data warehouse solution to support data analytics and visualization for your school, Amazon Redshift Serverless can help — you don’t need to be an expert in planning, provisioning, and scaling capacity to get started. Learn more about the benefits of Amazon Redshift Serverless.

New support for managing Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Custom is a managed database service for applications that require access to the underlying operating system and database environment to configure settings, install patches, and provide native features to meet the dependent application’s requirements. At re:Invent 2021, Amazon RDS Custom announced support for Microsoft SQL Server, adding to its existing support for Oracle. Amazon RDS Custom is ideal for schools that don’t want to completely self-manage their SQL Server or Oracle databases, but still need underlying access to features and tools that might normally be unsupported in a fully managed database service. Learn how Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server could work in your context.

Migrate petabytes of data on physical tapes to AWS
AWS Snow Family added a new secure, offline tape data migration capability for AWS Snowball Edge. This allows you to migrate up to petabytes of data stored on physical tapes to AWS, even in environments with connectivity limitations, bandwidth constraints, or high network connection costs. Schools can achieve greater durability, availability, and security by leveraging low-cost cloud storage for backup and archival data. This new capability streamlines those benefits by migrating tape data without having to change your existing tape-based backup workflows. With the data moved to AWS, you can eliminate physical tape infrastructure expenses and gain online access to your tape data. Find out more about tape data migration with AWS.

Check out the Top Announcements of AWS re:Invent 2021 to learn more about the new features and services that are relevant for any AWS customer, including announcements in compute, storage, networking, and security.

Learn more about cloud for K12 education with AWS

With the continued expansion of the AWS portfolio and our commitment to innovating on behalf of our customers, this is the best time for schools to adopt cloud technology. That said, it can be difficult to stay up to date on AWS services, features, and best practices. That’s why we launched AWS Skill Builder, which contains more than 500 no-cost, self-paced, digital courses, as well as AWS re:Post, a new, community-driven, Q&A service.

Learn more about how AWS can help your school at the K12 and Primary Education hub, or reach out directly to chat with a public sector representative with any questions.

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