Tag: schools

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping K12 school leaders understand how to leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the most practical and responsible ways. Together with the Council of the Great City Schools and the Consortium for School Networking, we created the K-12 Readiness Checklist and the newly released K12 Generative AI Maturity Readiness Assessment. Read this post to learn about these fundamental tools that can help guide school districts as they implement generative AI.

US schools are doing their best to support students, but with staffing shortages and additional challenges exacerbated by the widespread disruption in teaching and learning, the education community needs solutions to help with recovery. Students also need help available to them when they need it, and that may not fall within the hours of the school day. AWS Partner, Gaggle, is an education technology (EdTech) company that delivers solutions that focus on helping to keep students safe. Gaggle developed ReachOut, a mental health hotline built on AWS that connects K12 students to trained Gaggle support counselors, anywhere, anytime.

Recalling back to when he was a teacher, Andy Wolfenbarger, Supervisor of Student Information Systems at the Department of Information Technology Services at Prince William County Public Schools, was pulling triple duty – coaching football and tennis on top of teaching his four high school classes. With grades due, Andy had a small block of time after school to get them in. But unbeknownst to him, the switch in the network closet next to him needed to be upgraded. In the middle of inputting his grades, the system went dark.

When upgrading a school district’s infrastructure, the administration thinks about the physical buildings as well as the IT. In 2018, Portland Public Schools began tackling both. The district is visibly renovating many of its high schools, but behind the scenes, they also migrated to the cloud, increasing both performance and capacity for their users.