Amazon Web Services

Amazon AWS Educate opens up cloud to academia

Pro
(Source: Amazon)

21 May 2015

Amazon Web Services has announced the availability of a new programme to provide educators with the resources and materials to give students real world experience of cloud technologies, better preparing them to enter the workforce.

AWS Educate, said Amazon, is designed to make it easy for educators to find cloud-related course content, incorporate cloud technology into teaching curricula, and provide students with hands-on experience with the key technologies. The programme also provides AWS credits “to make the cloud more affordable than ever”. It is free for educational institutions, educators and students to join, said Amazon, following AWS’s approval of applications.

Cloud transformation
Cloud computing has rapidly transformed the way businesses and organisations across industries operate and innovate, argues Amazon, such as researchers using the cloud to study genomics, non-profits using data analytics to better target donors, start-ups 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 organisational innovation and business operations. As such, said the cloud giant, there is a growing demand for developers, IT professionals, and forward-thinking business leaders with demonstrated knowledge of cloud computing. AWS Educate empowers educators, said Amazon, 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 programme 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 start-up 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 first-hand in the classroom. We‘re pleased to offer AWS Educate to educators, students and educational institutions around the world.”

Benefits and credits
The benefits of the programme for educators and students include AWS credits for eligible services, such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), CloudFront, DynamoDB, Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR), Redshift, and Glacier.

Also available are web-based training and self-paced labs, and online access to AWS Essentials courses for a thorough technical overview of AWS products and common solutions. Collaboration forums mean that educators and students can attend in-person and virtual events designed to help the community incorporate cloud technology into coursework. Additionally, educators have access to a forum with other AWS Educators.

All AWS Educate members have access to a broad library of learning materials to use in their classrooms, including webinars on best practices, instructional videos on AWS services, and customer case studies.

Amazon said that 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 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.

NCI
“National College of Ireland (NCI) cherishes the opportunity to participate in the AWS Beta Programme for Education as it will enable us to further contribute to the advancement of Cloud Computing and Data Analytics worldwide,” said Dr. Horacio González-Vélez, Associate Professor and Head, Cloud Competency Centre, National College of Ireland.

“Cloud computing and Data Analytics are areas which grow continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, they are truly global in scope and cooperative in nature. Several specific advances have been preceded by the noble economic and in-kind contributions from industry which have set firm foundations for further research and development in academic institutions. Indeed, science and technology progress is intrinsically a collaborative effort, where individuals and institutions working together are often more effective than individual scientists or practitioners working alone. Academic grants from companies should be regarded as giving recognition to this general technical progress as well as to the individuals involved,” said González-Vélez.

For more information see: http://www.awseducate.com

 

 

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