Teachers from around the country invited to
shape the future of Amazon Inspire; a new, free service to support
learning and teaching in the digital classroom
Amazon Inspire will help teachers discover and
share free, quality digital educational resources
States, school districts and publishers join
Amazon on a new journey to make free, quality digital resources
easily discoverable for teachers
(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Today at ISTE 2016, Amazon announced Amazon
Inspire, a free service for the search, discovery and distribution
of digital educational resources. Developed in support of the
company’s commitment to making digital classrooms a reality, Amazon
Inspire, with its rich features such as search, discovery and peer
reviews, will provide educators—regardless of funding or
location—access to upload and share free digital teaching
resources. The company is inviting educators to shape the evolution
of this innovative service to best serve teachers as part of
Amazon’s support of the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen
initiative.
"To truly transform learning in our schools and ensure
educational equity for all students—regardless of grade level or
zip code—it is crucial that we put high quality, open educational
resources at teachers’ fingertips,” said Joseph South, director for
the Office of Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. “The
leadership of states, districts and innovative platform providers
is critical for setting a vision and creating an open ecosystem
where educators and students can access the tools, content and
expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world."
“Amazon joins educators from around the country in recognizing
the power of digital learning to transform the classroom, by
creating a personalized, engaging learning environment for all
students,” said Rohit Agarwal, General Manager of Amazon K-12
Education. “However, we also know that making that promise a
reality is a time consuming proposition and teachers tell us that
they spend upwards of 12 hours a week searching for and curating
resources for classroom instruction, placing a high degree of trust
in resources shared by their peers. With Amazon Inspire, we aim to
quickly and easily put the best and most trusted digital resources
at teachers’ fingertips, saving them valuable time that can be
devoted to what they do best and enjoy most—teaching.”
Amazon Inspire is in the beta stage and is ready for teachers to
use and provide feedback to help shape the future of K-12
education.
Amazon Inspire Features
- Smart search — With smart search,
teachers can explore resources by grade level, standard or even
from a particular district. Educators can filter search results
using more than 10 criteria to find great resources that best fit
their needs.
- Collections — Educators can group
resources into collections. They can describe the collection,
curate the resources in it, recommend an order for going through
the resources and share the collection with other teachers.
- Simple upload — Amazon Inspire offers
an easy to use and intuitive upload interface. Educators can drag
and drop files they want to share, add basic metadata such as
title, description, grade and subject, and publish the content on
the service, all in a few minutes.
- Customer reviews — Teachers can rate
and review resources on Amazon Inspire, helping their colleagues
around the country select the best resources for their needs.
- Accessibility support — Amazon Inspire
has built in accessibility features. For example, educators can
navigate Amazon Inspire using popular screen readers and users are
also able to indicate the accessibility features of resources they
upload.
“We’re mentors, facilitators, coaches, listeners, and learners,”
said Michael Buist, a teacher at Knox Gifted Academy in Chandler,
Arizona. “We’re Sherpas. And if it’s our job to get our students to
the top of the mountain, we also need help. We need inspiration and
resources. Amazon Inspire is that place to not only share, but
learn from each other and enhance our craft.”
With the growing support of states, school districts and
contributing publishers, Amazon Inspire aims to provide educators
with the largest selection of free and open educational resources
to improve instruction and student learning outcomes.
New York’s Mineola Public Schools is among the first school
districts in the country to join the Amazon Inspire service.
Superintendent Michael Nagler said, “Mineola is proud to contribute
content to the Amazon Inspire service. We believe the future of
public education in a digital world is the ability to easily find
engaging content for students. As more teachers share content on
Amazon Inspire, other teachers will find high quality, highly
successful classroom materials. That is a victory for every
child.”
Another early contributor to Amazon Inspire is Tulare County
Office of Education in Visalia, California, which serves more than
100,000 students in 43 school districts. Superintendent of Schools
Jim Vidak said, “We’re delighted that Amazon has provided a service
for our talented curriculum staff to distribute nationwide the
quality resources they carefully vetted or created for teachers. We
look forward to further growing and sharing open educational
resources as the result of the collaborations that emerge on Amazon
Inspire.”
In addition to teachers sharing innovative instructional
resources on Amazon Inspire, publishers and other content
developers are contributing digital educational resources to the
service. One contributor is the Newseum in Washington, D.C. "Too
many teachers struggle with time and budget constraints to get high
quality content for their students,” said Barbara McCormack, Vice
President of Education. “By collaborating with Amazon, we can take
an open access approach to scale quickly, ensuring teachers and
students get the resources they need to succeed in the classroom
and beyond.”
The U.S. Department of Education is also providing resources to
Amazon Inspire from College Scorecard, its collection of critical
information for making smart choices about which college to attend.
Teachers will be able to use those resources to help students get
the right information in the clearest way as they make the decision
about their future education.
Another example of an Amazon Inspire contributor is the Folger
Shakespeare Library. This year, as students celebrate the 400th
anniversary of Shakespeare’s life, Amazon Inspire has more than 100
teaching resources from the library available with an additional
2,000 to be added by back to school. These resources link directly
to classroom instruction about Shakespeare’s plays and the world
that shaped them, including the Folger Editions, which are the
number one Shakespeare text used in American classrooms today.
Amazon is also supported in this initiative by early adopter
states, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, early adopter
school districts, including Avonworth School District, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania; Cajon Valley Union School District, El Cajon,
California; Liberty Public Schools, Missouri; Metro Nashville
Public Schools; Tullahoma City Schools, Tennessee; and Virginia
Beach City Public Schools; and other contributing publishers, such
as EdLeader21 and the Buck Institute for Education, who committed
to openly sharing their original and curated digital educational
resources for the benefit of K-12 instruction across the
country.
Amazon first announced its commitment to the OER movement in
October 2015 when the U.S. Department of Education launched its
#GoOpen campaign. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is providing a
multi-year infrastructure and developer support for the Department
of Education’s Learning Registry, an open database where content
creators and educators can share information about digital
educational resources, ensuring that it remains robust and freely
available for all 15,000 U.S. school districts in our country.
Educators across the United States are invited to learn more
about or join the Amazon Inspire beta at www.amazoninspire.com.
About Amazon K-12 Education
Amazon Education’s mission is to improve learning outcomes with
solutions that help teachers focus on what they do best—teach,
engage and motivate students to learn. Products include
rigorous content and curriculum resources for differentiated
instruction and personalized learning, and a learning resource
service that specifically supports the discovery, curation,
creation, and distribution of digital education resources for every
educator across the country.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit
www.amazon.com/about.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160627005475/en/
Amazon.com, Inc.Media Hotline,
206-266-7180Amazon-pr@amazon.comwww.amazon.com/pr
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024