AWS Educate delivers real-world cloud technology to the classroom
with AWS credits, training, course content, and an educator community
forum
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2015--
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN),
today announced the launch of AWS Educate, a program that helps
educators and students use real-world cloud technology in the classroom
to graduate students ready to enter the cloud workforce. AWS Educate is
designed to make it easy for educators to quickly and easily find
cloud-related course content, incorporate cloud technology into their
teaching curriculum, and provide students with hands-on experience with
cloud technology – with AWS credits to make the cloud more affordable
than ever. AWS Educate is free for educational institutions, educators
and students to join, following AWS’s approval of their application. To
learn more about AWS Educate, visit: http://www.awseducate.com.
Cloud computing has rapidly transformed the way businesses and
organizations across industries operate and innovate, such as
researchers using the cloud to study genomics, non-profits using data
analytics to better target donors, startups creating disruptive new
applications, or established companies bringing new innovations to
market faster. Cloud computing has become the default environment not
just for building and deploying applications, but it has also become a
key driver for transforming organizational innovation and business
operations. As such, there is a growing demand for developers,
information technology (IT) professionals, and forward-thinking business
leaders with demonstrated knowledge of cloud computing. AWS Educate
empowers educators with training, tools, and technologies to help
students develop the skills to design, deploy and operate applications
on the AWS Cloud.
“For years, the AWS educational grants program has put cloud technology
in the hands of educators and students, giving them the ability to put
big ideas into action. We’ve seen students develop assistive computer
vision technology in collaboration with the National Federation of the
Blind, and aspiring entrepreneurs take a web startup from conception to
launch within 60 hours,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide
Public Sector, AWS. “Based on the feedback and success of our grant
recipients and the global need for cloud-skilled workers, we developed
AWS Educate to help even more students learn cloud technology firsthand
in the classroom. We’re pleased to offer AWS Educate to educators,
students and educational institutions around the world.”
By joining the program at http://www.awseducate.com,
educator and student members receive several benefits, including:
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AWS credits: Educators and students can apply for and redeem
AWS credits for eligible services, including Amazon Elastic Compute
Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon
Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon
DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR), Amazon Redshift, and
Amazon Glacier. While students and educators at any educational
institution may join the program, those affiliated with an institution
that becomes a member may receive additional AWS credits.
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Web-based training and self-paced labs: Access to self-paced
labs can help educators and students gain hands-on experience working
with AWS technologies; additionally, educators receive online access
to AWS Essentials courses for a thorough technical overview of AWS
products and common solutions.
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Collaboration forums: Educators and students can attend
in-person and virtual events designed to help the AWS Educate
community incorporate cloud technology into coursework; additionally,
educators have access to a forum in which they can join discussions
with other AWS Educators.
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AWS resources: All AWS Educate members have access to a wide
library of learning materials they may use in their classrooms,
including webinars on best practices, instructional videos on AWS
services, and customer case studies.
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Educator content: Educators can access and share professional
development materials to help them incorporate cloud technology into
their coursework. Currently, AWS Educate houses over 100
educator-uploaded materials from many of the top computer science
universities around the world, including Harvard University, Stanford
University, and Cornell Tech. Materials include a wide range of full
courses, syllabi, lectures, and homework assignments, for example:
lectures, videos, and assignments from University of Pennsylvania
Professor Zack Ives’ Scalable and Cloud Computing class;
University of Toronto’s Eyal de Lara’s Introduction to Cloud
Computing class; and University of Washington’s Magdalena
Balazinska’s Introduction to Data Management class.
Dr. Majd Sakr, computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University,
said, “Three years ago, I began incorporating AWS services into my cloud
computing courses. The cloud resources AWS provided me has allowed me to
really challenge my students to develop real-world solutions to problems
they might face in their careers. One such project involves giving
students 1.2 terabytes of Twitter data and asking them to compete
against other students by building a tweet query web service that meets
correctness, budget and throughput requirements. So far, we’ve had over
770 students complete this course, and as an institution, we are
committed to expanding our use of AWS technology in the classroom over
the next several years through AWS Educate.”
Professor Zack Ives at the University of Pennsylvania shared complete
course materials and assignments (jointly developed with his colleague,
Professor Andreas Haeberlen) from two classes with AWS Educate.
Professor Ives said, “I am a big believer in course projects that fully
exercise what the students are learning in the class, and simultaneously
demystify the popular services they use every day. We give them
realistic projects, such as a full-fledged social network with friend
recommendation, or building a Web crawler and search engine. AWS Educate
completely changes the scope of the resources we can make available for
the project -- even in a large class, they see what it takes to truly
harness Hadoop, cloud key-value stores, and clusters of virtual
machines. This experience is imperative to giving them the ability and
confidence to succeed in their future careers. I’m happy to share my
coursework with the AWS Educate educator community, and look forward to
learning from fellow computer science professors.”
The Los Angeles High Impact Information Technology, Entertainment &
Entrepreneurship, and Communications Hubs (LA HI-TECH) is a regional
consortium of eight community colleges with a mission of building and
sustaining a skilled and competitive workforce that contributes to the
economic growth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). “By
providing content, training resources, and access to AWS credits for
students, AWS Educate helps us create clear career pathways in IT for
almost 2,000 community college students,” said Dr. Patricia Ramos, Dean
of Workforce and Economic Development, Santa Monica College and West
Regional Hub Chair of LA HI-TECH. “Our regional consortium of eight Los
Angeles-area community colleges, LA Unified School District, and four
other school districts and charters, relies on access to new technology
and knowledge sharing between educators to equip our students with the
skills needed to succeed in a competitive workforce.”
For more information or to join AWS Educate, visit http://www.awseducate.com.
About Amazon Web Services
Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services offers a robust, fully featured
technology infrastructure platform in the cloud comprised of a broad set
of compute, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment
services from data center locations in the U.S., Australia, Brazil,
China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, and Singapore. More than a million
customers, including fast-growing startups, large enterprises, and
government agencies across 190 countries, rely on AWS services to
innovate quickly, lower IT costs and scale applications globally. To
learn more about AWS, visit http://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is
guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor
focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and
long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized
recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct
Publishing, Kindle, Fire phone, Fire tablets, and Fire TV are some of
the products and services pioneered by Amazon.

Source: Amazon Web Services, Inc.
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