AWS commits $100 million to help students gain AI skills

The courses, a part of the AWS Education Equity Initiative, will grant recipients cloud credits, which function similarly to cash, allowing organisations to reduce their expenses when utilising AWS' cloud services.

Photo: AWS

Recipients can then take advantage of AWS's comprehensive portfolio of cloud technology and advanced AI services to create innovations such as AI assistants, coding curriculums, connectivity tools, student learning platforms, mobile apps, chatbots, and other technology-based learning experiences. They can also get technical expertise from AWS Solution Architects, who will provide architectural guidance, best practices for responsible AI implementation, and ongoing optimisation support.

According to AWS, in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, skills in AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and computer science can offer boundless opportunities for students. However, not everyone can easily acquire these in-demand, career-enhancing skills.

AWS is committed to levelling the playing field for learners from underrepresented and underserved communities so they can have equal access to transformative learning opportunities. That’s why AWS is committing up to $100 million in cloud credits over the next five years to help education organisations around the world build digital learning solutions as part of the AWS Education Equity Initiative.

AWS is already working with more than 50 groups from 10 countries, enabling them to use advanced technologies to bring digital learning solutions to underserved and underrepresented communities.

Examples include, Code.org, a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing computer science and AI education for K-12 schools with a focus on supporting young women and students from underrepresented groups, is adopting AWS’s cloud credits to scale an AI Teaching Assistant. This innovation has already helped teachers reduce the time they spend assessing students’ coding projects by up to half.

Improved efficiency means teachers have more time to work on personalised lesson plans and coach students. Code.org’s AI Teaching Assistant is powered by Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service to build and scale Generative AI innovations.

Rocket Learning, an India-based non-profit that improves access to quality education for underserved young children, will scale a project that leverages Amazon Q in AWS QuickSight as a generative business intelligence service to analyse trends and the effectiveness of video and WhatsApp-based content delivered to educators and parents. This analysis helps optimise content to enhance learning outcomes for children across diverse regions, with consideration for the various languages and cultural differences.

Tangible Africa, another non-profit group, equips children in South Africa with coding skills. It will scale an offline coding curriculum built on AWS to reach 10,000 learners and 120 teachers in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia.

The AWS Education Equity Initiative builds on Amazon and AWS’s longstanding commitment to unlock education and career opportunities for underserved learners. In the past year, more than two million students have received over 17 million hours of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, literacy, and career development courses through Amazon Future Engineer, a childhood-to-career scheme dedicated to increasing access to computer science education for students from underserved and underrepresented groups, and other Amazon education programmes. AWS’ AI and Machine Learning Scholarship Programme has awarded $28 million in scholarships to approximately 6,000 students to prepare them for a career in AI.

With the addition of the AWS Education Equity Initiative, AWS will be able to help non-profits, education technology companies, social enterprises, governments, and corporate social responsibility teams expand access to learning and development opportunities to underrepresented and underserved communities.

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