Education is just one of the many set-in-stone institutions that COVID-19 has upended and forced into the digital sphere. Schools, colleges and universities across the globe are planning classes for the upcoming academic year. And one thing is certain: Education will be never be the same.

“This is an opportunity to really provide the students … with skills that they need in an on-demand fashion at all times,” said Ken Eisner (pictured), director of the worldwide education programs at Amazon Web Services Inc.

Eisner spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit event. They discussed how education is adapting to going remote and the learning model of the future. (* Disclosure below.)

The teaching triage as education switches to online learning

The scramble when children around the world suddenly switched to learning from home has been well reported. While online educational opportunities had been present for some time, “the move from in-person classroom instruction into the virtual world at such amazing scale and rapidity is something that educational institutions weren’t ready for,” Eisner said. “Education needs to operate at scale. Education needs to operate at speed. And education needs to deliver to a changing customer. And we’ve got to be partners on that journey.”

The AWS Public Sector has always focused on helping governments and education. And that commitment has become critical during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Already in place was the AWS Educate global program. This was designed to provide students and educators around the world with the resources needed to help them get into cloud learning. A quick survey of the educators already involved with AWS found that 68% had experience in online virtual education and could offer guidance to teachers that were not prepared for the sudden shift.

“We immediately spun up a series of educator-to-educator help tools,” Eisner stated. The AWS Educate Educator Mobilization Initiative “helps teachers have the resources that they need with the speed that they need to get online,” he added.

Eisner gave many examples of how AWS infrastructure has facilitated online education. One that stood out was how AWS worked with the Egyptian Ministry of Education to provide online education access to 22 million students. Another was how his department worked with the Los Angeles Unified School District to stand up a contact center with Amazon Connect and provide all high school seniors with headphones for learning online.

“I think we provided 132,000 students with headphones,” Eisner said. “ Every student needs access in their home. Every student needs access to great learning, and they need it on demand.”

Constant learning is the new education model

The new normal for education will be one where learning is a lifelong pursuit. “We’ve been building AWS Educate to stack to the job, to stack to careers,” Eisner stated.

A report by the World Economic Forum at Davos 2020 highlighted the demand for re-skilled or up-skilled workers able to meet the demands of the online world. COVID-19 has only intensified that need.

“Everybody needs to be a student throughout their entire life, and they need to be streaming in and out of education,” Eisner said. “The only way that this can be properly done is through virtual environments, through the cloud, and through access to on-demand learning.”

AWS Educate aims to power that next wave of innovation. The disruption caused by the pandemic is “an opportunity in our society to really look at everybody as a constant learner,” Eisner said. “This is an opportunity to … rethink, re-innovate, and reinvent the way we look at education.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Public Sector Summit Online event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE