5 ways to enhance your career with Amazon cloud-computing skills

Started in 2015, AWS Educate is designed for cloud-curious learners like students and people in job-training programs. Students as young as 13 years old are eligible to register, and participants can take advantage of hundreds of hours of free and self-paced training, including over 50 courses and 10 labs that use the AWS Management Console for hands-on practice. If you’re completely new to the cloud, courses like Intro to Cloud 101 and Introduction to the AWS Management Console are exactly what you need to get started. The program is rounded out with supplementary information like Twitch videos, blogs, and technical papers.

AWS Skill Builder offers a blend of free and paid educational services. You can take advantage of more than 600 digital courses, learning plans, and official practice questions to prepare you for AWS Certification at no cost—and even play the AWS Cloud Quest role-playing game that lets you focus on the Cloud Practitioner role. Subscribe to an individual subscription and you get access to five additional AWS Cloud Quest roles, including Solutions Architect, Security Specialist, and Serverless Developer, more than 125 AWS Builder Labs, three AWS Certification Official Practice Question Sets, and more. The AWS Jam Journey, for example, lets you build your cloud skills by participating in a collection of interactive, real-world scenarios that cover topics like networking, security, databases, and machine learning.

AWS Essential Days are free, live virtual training events to help kick-start your AWS Cloud learning journey. Each training event is led by an accredited AWS instructor, with real-time Q&A chat and support.  They cover a range of topics such as AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, AWS Technical Essentials, AWS Security Fundamentals, and AWS Cost Optimisation. AWS Essential Days are updated regularly and are available at different dates and times. You can register for upcoming events here.

As part of Skill Builder, AWS Cloud Quest turns learning cloud concepts into a game—an open-world role-playing game. You get to roam a 3D virtual city, taking on challenges that teach you to build practical AWS solutions using cloud concepts and exercises for the residents of the digital city. Throughout the game, you’re presented with business problems that you can interactively solve using a collection of puzzles, lab exercises, and simulations running the gamut of AWS services, including storage, computing, database, and security. And it’s a real game, complete with mini-game diversions, in-game upgrades, and rewards that unlock additional character styles and gameplay modes. It can also help adult learners prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam.

Take the helm of a financial services firm and guide it to success by implementing real AWS solutions. That’s the premise behind AWS Industry Quest: Financial Services, another cloud service training tool designed within an exciting game. Like AWS Cloud Quest, AWS Industry Quest is a role-playing game in a 3D world aimed at adult learners. The game tasks you with solving real-world problems across more than two dozen use cases, whether you’re preventing fraud in real-time with machine learning algorithms or improving records retention systems using data warehouses and data lakes. Because AWS Industry Quest is a game, it keeps you engaged with in-game customisation and rewards as your business grows – with additional industries launching soon.