Cloud Education: Teacher's Edition: Recent Episodes

Tasha Penwell

In this podcast I'll be sharing information on what is happening w/ AWS Educate and other resources that can be used to learn about the AWS Cloud.

Next week, we'll discuss my exam for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification but this week let's focus on the GTech Summit experience. I had the opportunity to speak at the GTechSummit last week on how Snapchat and developing AR experiences can bring a new learning experience into the classroom for topics like marketing, programming, and graphic design. You can find the recording of my presentation at https://zoom.us/rec/play/xsYQ_-a_TnmL_wvt539jzNbNVXsDplKvq-4iovR6HUTJfUsvHxyRYnm4fgx3zsfkv8VmbTe9VeDVc-YN.g_hN1_KMkI1_NqEK?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=zRe23oo6QHecWcmMdR61jw.1628686493314.938e1b4c6094b2a5f501732ccf99adc6&_x_zm_rhtaid=833

Check out these links below for additional information on GTech and LensStudio

Gtech Summit https://sites.google.com/genoaschools.com/g-techsummit

LensStudio https://lensstudio.snapchat.com/

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In today’s episode I share my thoughts and struggles as I prepare for my next exam to receive my AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification. Part of it is understanding and realizing that my past study styles and methods may not work for this. I have to change my learning style due to different kind of time constraints the different subject matter and other things that come along the way. Ultimately, this is a goal for August 2021.

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In today's episode, I share my experiences and struggles to teach in computer sciences fields. As teachers in this subject, we must also be come students as well to help ensure we're teaching our students skills that are relevant and in demand for today's changing technology fields. Amazon Sumerian is one example of one resource we can use to build augmented reality experiences and has great instructional materials that can help make the learning experience a better one for both the student and the teacher. I'll be speaking about Amazon Sumerian at the Shawnee Game Conference this October. Follow me on my social media channels to learn more about the upcoming event or go straight to the source at https://www.shawneegamecon.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tashapenwell Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tashapenwell/ TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tashapenwell Twitter https://twitter.com/PenwellTasha

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This week’s episode focused on volunteering. This episode was actually recorded in between volunteering at the Women in Analytics Conference in Columbus Ohio this past week. There are benefits to volunteering that I’ve discussed before, such as free entrance into the conference, swag, looks good on a résumé, networking and meeting with people, talking to recruiters, and many others. One thing that I don’t think I mentioned before, Is the value of conversations and somebody else bringing their own perspective to something. Listen to learn what new insights I walked away with after conversations with others and an overall great experience.

In today's episode, I discuss an interesting video from We Work Remotely's career fair in April 2021. The takeaways I found most interesting are

He applied to work with Automattic four times before he was hired. (How many times do we stop at one?)
He knew this was a company that had values and a mission he believed in and that helped him continue to pursue even when rejected.
He doesn't know what changed between his first time applying and the fourth time. Maybe because he gained more experience? Maybe it was just the person reading the resume?

One of the reasons that I enjoyed this video and a topic for one of my next blogs is because it's a testament that consistently working for your goals and your dreams do pay off. Even the little failures that come along the way are still experiences for us to learn and grow. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has multiple resources for developers and entrepreneurs to learn and improve their skill sets. The resources are there for the taking, just need a little motivation and desire to dive in and make progress to your own dream job.

See below for links.

We Work Remotely https://weworkremotely.com/

WWR Interview with Automattic engineer César Tardáguila https://youtu.be/TRJVSuByuiE

AWS Training & Certification https://www.aws.training/

Hocking College AWS Academy https://hockingcollege.regfox.com/aws-academy-cloud-fundamentals-452021---5282021?__hstc=152003750.732f939ec71c5cc19b0b25fbcf60f369.1589416045726.1626260323203.1626285569703.197&__hssc=&hsCtaTracking=6c0fb543-b97e-4a0d-a8c0-5a9709ab94b3%7C8eb435c8-f7d2-4ac5-9ef8-327f008e6594

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Today's episode was inspired by Nike's Run Coach as he talked about his method to coach was to help his runners to remember their love of what they are doing. I thought that was a great topic to cover as we learn new technologies like AWS services. Is reasonable and realistic for us to love it all the time? No. Hopefully, the ratio of "loving the learn" is approximately 80/20 and that's okay! It's expected. It's normal. I have my days where as much as I'm intrigued by the technology and working towards my next certifications, I reach burnout and take a needed break. Ultimately, it's important to remember that you're learning these new technologies because you have goals to build your future around the career opportunities of cloud computing.

LovetheLearn

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We recently hosted STEAM camp at Hocking College. Students from local high schools were able to learn about careers and activities related to robotics, art, cybersecurity, ethical hacking, augmented reality, and more.

For my session, we covered augmented reality and use cases for this emerging technology. The slides that review career opportunities can be found at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Room1dmxoC6Cl1LgsXtAHNshreqKPQrcjCTaXQ4zuag/edit?usp=sharing. I explained to the students that my side hustle includes helping small businesses with their marketing and that includes social media marketing so that's where my natural focus and interest lies in but don't think that's the only use case for AR technology. There are multiple use cases already being implemented or organizations are working to learn how to implement them. Current examples include medical training, factory floor training, real estate markets, and more that I'm not even aware of or have been thought of yet.

One of the reasons I'm so fascinated with AR is that it provides an opportunity to combine art and development (visual coding or the more traditional "hard" coding"). If you check out my website https://tashapenwell.com/, you see that the banner says "Analytical, Curious, Creative" and learning and developing on AR technologies is a perfect way to explore those three characteristics.

This week we hosted STEAM camp at Hocking College and I am excited to share the world of augmented reality (AR) and digital marketing (well at least as much as possible in two hours😉).

Snapchat filters are built using free software called LensStudio. One of the nice things about diving into AR technologies is that, in my experience, the platforms are very similar across the different vendors and apps. There are three basic fundamental parts of building an AR experience.

Objects
Assets
Materials

While varying platforms may use a different name - the similarities are evident once you're aware of it. The layouts and UI for the platforms I've worked with (LensStudio, SparkAR, and Amazon Sumerian) are also very similar which aids a great deal in the learning curve of different platforms.

If you have any questions regarding AR technologies, digital marketing, or more, check us out at https://withkoji.com/@HockingCollegeComputerScience or text me at 740-645-0509.

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In this episode I share about my personal health journey and sometimes my motivation to keep with my routine is the external surroundings of being by the river. The water - whether it be the Gulf Coast, the Ohio River, or a local lake is my happy place. It's my calm when things are turning like a tornado.

I wanted to share how motivation in learning is often similar in that it needs the motivation to keep it up - especially when things start getting hard. Technology is an ever-growing and constantly changing field that one can often be overwhelmed when trying to learn skillsets for their future careers. My best tip that I practice myself and that I advise my students is to find what you really like and dive into it. This doesn't mean to forget other things in life but once you find that spark - those things that motivate you - explore it. For me, my personal areas of fascination are in AR and VUI, and as time allows with other responsibilities in life you'll find me creating, practicing, and failing forward in my learning in these areas.

I tell my students that in your two years with me you'll (hopefully) discover what you love, what you like, what you hate. My goal is to help fan the flames of what you love and like and help you manage w/ what you hate. Your goal should be to catch the fire of interest and start working towards that career early on those interests.

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It's been a busy few months. I've been taking classes to earn my Real Estate license along with AWS courses so the podcast has been a little dormant lately. Now that the classes are complete (and AWS learning never stops) here's to trying to get back into the swing of things.

Today's episode is a review of my Augmented Reality (AR) presentation for COSI Science Festival last week. The platforms we covered are the three that I personally enjoy exploring and creating with.

LensStudio for Snapchat
SparkAR for Facebook and Instagram
Amazon Sumerian for anything!

You can see the slides full of links and YouTube tutorials at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tKYlhnn8YqP64oTeMRvlJGc3bAjqs-CVLVfkIXy-AjM/edit?usp=sharing.

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In this episode, we review how to find that job to put into use all those skills that we are learning. I'm referring to an article from The Muse at https://www.themuse.com/advice/reinvent-online-presence-job-search.

The six things we cover is advice on the following:

How to Google yourself
Complete a social media audit
Create a personal website (you don't need to put everything on your resume)
Clean up your LinkedIn Profile (or create one)
Optimize your online presence by creating content relevant to your skills or niche. This can be done in the format of blogs, videos, etc.
Keep your information (experience, education, etc.) up-to-date

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AWS Media Intelligence Solutions is a new service offered by AWS. If you enjoy creating content and want to have a higher ROI and create better, safer content for your audience this is something cool to check out.

As promised, below are the links to the articles I mentioned.

https://www.tvtechnology.com/equipment/aws-releases-aws-media-intelligence-solutions

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/announcing-aws-media-intelligence-solutions/

If you have any questions - let me know! Text me at 740-645-0509.

This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Three of the best practices of advice I would recommend for any college looking into bringing the Google IT Professional Certification into their offerings as part of a class or stand-alone course is as follows:

Require participants to complete an orientation. When we started our course it was in April 2020 - at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. With the confusion and concern facing everyone, an official orientation was not completed. When we offer the course again in May 2021 we will require participants to attend an orientation to help ensure they understand the requirements and time commitment expected to complete the course and reinforce the process for requesting for assistance in the course.
Set a realistic timeframe for completion that also provides urgency. For our offering last year, participants had access to the course for 11 months thanks to the JFF grant. It's estimated that it will take approximately 6 months to complete with 10-15 hours per week being devoted to the coursework. Ironically, it turned out that having 11 months to complete the course provided helpful leniency for some and supported a sense of procrastination for others. It's imperative that an appropriate sense of urgency is shared for the course to prevent participants from letting it continually sit on the backburner.
Failing forward and Rubber Duck Debugging. "You will fail" It's one of the first sentences I've begun telling my students. Accept the fact that you will fail but you will also learn. These failures that we face along the way are something to embrace because it allows for increased discovery and opportunities to learn that are oftentimes greater than the learning experience we would have had if everything worked the first time every time. Accept the fact that you will fail. Embrace it even and when you're stuck - talk to the duck and provide each participant their own rubber duck (available in bulk on Amazon) and explain the concept of rubber duck debugging.

If you have any questions about learning digital skills from Google or Amazon Web Services, please reach out to me at penwellt@hocking.edu or 740-645-0509. I'll be happy to help.

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The advantage of no code/low code tools is that it opens up a door of possibilities for both the coders and the non-coders to become developers. While developing a website or application does require coding - it's actually much more than that. There's the user interface (UI), user experience (UX), design thinking, marketing and more that goes into an idea becoming a reality and successfully in the hands (or on the screens) of the end user. All those components take time and skills sets that can be unique but with the coming of these tools the barriers between ideation to creation and deployment are removed. This new type of developers are called Citizen Developers.

One of the latest options available to take part of this movement is Amazon Honeycode. The new Amazon service is a fully-managed AWS service that gives developers the power to build powerful mobile & web applications without writing any code. It uses the familiar spreadsheet model and lets you get started in minutes.

Honeycode is still in beta but if you enjoy working with tools like Excel and Access I have a feeling you'll enjoy exploring what this tool has to offer in terms of opportunities to build quickly and bring those ideas to life.

Curious about getting started with this new tool from the biggest cloud computing provider? Check out some of these resources below.

AWS Educate

Available to educators and students

Must be 14 or older 2. AWS Training & Certificate

Available to anyone with an Amazon account

Taught by Amazon professionals

Earn certificates of completion 3. Amazon Honeycode website and start getting your hands dirty with the creation

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While listening to Techmeme's podcast from February 1 I heard (again) about the rising popularity of augmented reality(AR). Whether it's for instruction, for training, for marketing, or simply for fun - AR has definitely seen a rise in popularity partly due to quarantine and partly due to ingenuity of how to make the most of an uncertain time.

Listen (and subscribe) to the Techmeme episode at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mon-02-01-google-deadpools-the-pixel-slate/id1355212895?i=1000507326146

The WSJ link mentioned can be found at https://www.wsj.com/articles/augmented-reality-gets-pandemic-boost-11611866795

Learn about LensStudio to develop for Snapchat at https://lensstudio.snapchat.com/

Learn about SparkAR to develop for Facebook or Instagram at https://sparkar.facebook.com/ar-studio/download/

Learn about AWS Educate at https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/

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As an educator and lifelong learner myself, I'm always on the lookout to learn about the new skill sets in need and the resources to learn them. The skills that an article from Financial Express titled Are you job-ready for the new normal? https://www.financialexpress.com/jobs/are-you-job-ready-for-the-new-normal/2172862/

We'll be reviewing the skills in demand for today and tomorrow in addition to the resources available for anyone to access and use to learn these new and ever-changing in-demand skills.

Below are a list of resources

Google Skillshop (free)
HubSpot Academy (free)
Google Analytics Academy (free)
AWS Training & Certification (free)
Canva Design School (free)
A Book Apart ($10 - $25)
CS50 (free)
Figma (free)

You can find the links and more information about the skills and resources at my related blog at https://bytesandbits.org/2021/01/30/learning-the-skills-for-your-next-job/

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We're continuing to learn about resources that help us bring robotics into the classroom virtually using the AWS Educate platform. AWS Educate has new digital badges focusing on robotics and Robotic Operating Systems (ROS).

Check out AWS Educate to learn more about RoboMaker digital badges and more at https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/.

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AWS Educate has a great platform to learn about robotics and ROS. They've recently released three new digital badges to support the study of robotics using the AWS platform.

If you haven't signed up for AWS Educate it's open to all educators and students. All you need to do is apply and be sure to use you school email. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

https://www.awseducate.com/educator/s/studentbadges

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NASA Glenn Research Center Office of STEM Engagement has issued a contest to help support collaboration of higher education and K12 to support STEM. My proposal includes a focus on robotics utilizing the resources to learn about robotics and ROS (Robot Operating System) on AWS Educate platform.

You can learn more about the NASA competition at https://paragon-tec.com/funding-opportunities/#spring2021OCU and more at AWS Educate at https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/.

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AWS Educate is a platform specifically created for K12 and higher education institutions. AWS Educate has recently released several new badges onto their platform. Badges will be reviewed for use cases and how to get the most out of AWS Educate platform whether you're a teacher or a student.

If you would like to learn more about AWS in your role as a teacher or a student head to https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/ to learn more and sign up!

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It’s been a couple months since I’ve had the chance to put out an episode. Trying to find a balance that’s realistic to provide quality and quantity to my audience.

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In this episode I complete an introduction to DeepComposer as a fun platform that teachers and students can explore AI technology and new techniques for machine learning. It's completely web-based with no downloads required which makes it ideal for working on Chromebooks.

YouTube video can be found at https://youtu.be/c7jPD3_7Py0

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AWS is having a competition for various start ups to compete and to enter and to win prizes that includes cash prizes and AWS credits. It is available for faculty students and staff that are associated with US higher education institutions. Competitions like these are fun to get motivated and to explore something new with technologies that can include AI, machine learning, or anything else that you have an interest in.

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Today’s episode we start talking about DeepComposer and AI technology. There’s a huge demand for this field and teachers, students and anybody who wants to adopt mentality of a lifelong learner can start learning how to use AI technologies on AWS with the DeepComposer.

See the infographic on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tashapenwell_todays-podcast-focused-on-generative-adversarial-activity-6727369531586695169-C-Po.

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This episode is focusing on how the NFL is using AWS sources to compile data to produce information for the players, teams and more. What makes this even more interesting is that this is an open competition for anyone interested in pursuing their own adventure of using data for the NFL.

Check out the links below to learn more.

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/nfl-reveals-new-expected-rush-yards-stat-help-amazon-web-services/
https://operations.nfl.com/the-game/big-data-bowl/
https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/
https://www.kaggle.com/c/nfl-big-data-bowl-2021/overview

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Toyota Racing Development has started using analytics to help their race team win. AWS provides tools and resources where teachers and students can learn about analytics, machine learning and reinforcement learning to get students ready for internships or careers of their dreams. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amazonwebservices/2020/10/07/toyota-racing-development-uses-data-to-outpace-competition-using-aws-analytics/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-educate-releases-three-new-cloud-badges-aws-robomaker-amazon-sumerian-and-aws-deepracer/

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In this episode I share about about Carrier Global Corporation and the strategy to build the Lynx Digital Platform for refrigeration solutions. Utilizing AWS Carrier is creating the Lynx Digital Platform and IoT data to collect information to ensure that the precious cargo of food, medicines, vaccines and other is kept from spoilage. Learn more about how AWS Educate can help ensure that the students in your classroom today can learn about IoT.

Check out the YouTube video with slides at https://youtu.be/eB5S7scDYGE

Links of information about Carrier's project can be found at

https://www.barrons.com/press-release/carrier-launches-healthy-safe-sustainable-cold-chain-program-01601499040?tesla=y&tesla=y
https://www.oaoa.com/news/business/carrier-and-aws-collaborate-to-transform-how-food-medicine-vaccines-and-other-perishable-goods-are/article_7d3762c6-d3c4-5bf8-a248-a8b2c8a1762f.html?mode=jqm

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In this episode I share about the AWS Grand Challenge happening in India and while this particular challenge isn't available in the United States there is an excellent opportunity to match up employers and students (high school and college level) through AWS Educate.

If you'd like to learn more about the Grand Challenge in India go to https://www.ciol.com/startupreneurs-right-ofin-college-participate-aws-grand-challenge-via-startup-india/

If you'd like to learn more about AWS Educate and the opportunities for employer, teacher or student go to the links below:

https://cloudeducationteacheredition.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/AWS+Educate+(3).pdf https://cloudeducationteacheredition.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Educate_Pathways+(2).pdf

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Last week we created a landing page this week we are customizing the landing page and we are deploying it on Amplify. Next week will be focusing more on kinesis. These are all great tools with an AWS Educate!

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I share about how Amazon Career Day can be the motivation for students to find the drive to complete some assignments if they are not sure of the particular field that they want to go into.

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In this introductory episode I talk about a new school year in the "Year of whatever". We approach the Fall 2020 school year a little more prepared but still uncertain on what plans will work and what won't.

This series focuses on AWS Educate and other AWS tools to learn about cloud computing and how to ensure that students are staying motivated and inspired for their next opportunities.

Read the full blog at https://codecopycoffeeshops.com/2020/08/23/a-new-school-year-plan-a-to-z/