AWS Educate: Amazon's attempt to transform students into cloud experts

Amazon has launched AWS Educate – a programme that helps educators and students use cloud technology in the classroom to graduate students ready to enter the cloud workforce. Amazon says the platform will make it easy for teachers 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.” [caption id=“attachment_2012221” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representative image[/caption] Cloud computing has rapidly transformed the way businesses and organisations across industries operate and innovate. Cloud computing has become the default environment not just for building and deploying applications, but it has also become a key driver for transforming organisational 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,” the company added. By joining the programme, students and education professions gain access to AWS Educate resources including: – AWS credits: AWS credits can be earned and used for 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. – Web-based training and labs set at your own pace: Hands-on experience working with AWS technologies. In addition, educators receive online access to AWS Essentials courses to better their understanding of cloud technology. –  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. -- 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. -- Educator content: Education professionals can access and share professional development materials. Currently, AWS Educate hosts over 100 educator-uploaded materials from universities worldwide, including Harvard, Stanford and Cornell Tech. AWS Educate is free for educational institutions, educators and students to join, following AWS’s approval of their application.