Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), today launched AWS Educate, an educational service for students and educators that prepares IT professionals, developers, and business staff to enter the cloud workforce.
AWS stated that cloud computing is changing the way businesses operate and driving innovation in organizations. AWS also said that there is a need to train more people in cloud technologies.
AWS Educate empowers educators, with tools and technologies to help students learn the skills to design and deploy applications on the AWS Cloud,” the company stated in a statement today.
Exec Jeff Barr explained in a blog post that this will be possible primarily because of four resources: grants for AWS credits to be used in courses and projects; free content you can embed in courses or use as-is; access free and discounted AWS Training resources; online and in-person collaboration opportunities and networking opportunities
Anyone can apply to the program from any country. Students and institutions who are officially enrolled in the program are eligible for additional discounts.
Teachers get access to a collaboration portal, AWS Essentials eLearning, and Online Labs for free. They also receive 50 percent off when they purchase instructor-led training or AWS Certification.
Online Labs are available to students, as well as a student portal. Students who belong to AWS Educate can also apply for $100 in credits.
AWS will also visit organizations that have signed up for the AWS Educate program in order to provide training, hackathons, and other events.
“We want do our part to help educational institutions around the world train and graduate students who can power the cloud-powered future. Barr stated.
Web-based training and self paced labs will help students get hands-on experience using AWS technologies. Teachers can also upload course resources to assist with this goal. The program is currently in testing and AWS Educate has already uploaded more than 100 resources from universities like Cornell Tech, Stanford University, and Harvard University.
Professor Zack Ives, for example, has given lectures, videos, and assignments from his Scalable & Cloud Computing class at Penn. The University of Toronto is participating in an Introduction to Cloud Computing class by Eyal de Lar and the University of Washington will be providing materials from Magdalena Balazinska’s Introduction to Data Management class.
Ives stated that she believes in course projects that fully apply what students have learned in class and decode the most popular services they use every single day. We give them real projects like a full-fledged social networking with friend recommendation or building a Web crawler/search engine. AWS Educate dramatically changes the scope of resources that we can make available to the project. Even in large classes, they see how to harness Hadoop, cloud key value stores, and clusters virtual machines.
He said, “This experience is crucial to give them the ability to succeed in future careers.” “I’m glad to share my coursework and look forward to learning more from fellow computer science professors.”
Anyone interested in joining the program can sign up. Participation is contingent upon AWS approval.