Amazon is Evolving New Trends in Education Sector

As soon as we hear the word ‘Amazon’, our mind automatically forms a list of all the shopping to be done. From apparels, footwear, household/electrical appliances and more, Amazon.com offers these products at amazing prices.

Having tapped the online shopping industry, Amazon recently forayed into education by launching an online marketplace called Amazon Inspire. This online portal allows Kindergarten to 12^th grade teachers to search for school plans, lessons, apps, worksheets, software and other educational content. This platform will bring together teachers from all over the world to discover and share free, quality digital resources.

As per Rohit Agarwal, General manager of Amazon K-12 Education, Amazon joins educators from around the country in recognising the power of digital learning to transform the classroom, by creating a personalised, engaging and learning environment for all students. Teachers spend more than 12 hours a week searching for resources for classroom instructions, placing a high degree of trust in resources shared by their peers. Amazon Inspire aims 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 retains the core functionality of Amazon.com that is to search for and review the products. If a teacher of, say 9^th grade creates useful material and uploads it on the portal and gives it right tags, the classrooms around the country can find it as per their requirement.

Features of Amazon Inspire:

Smart search: Teachers can search for material according to grades or any particular subject. The search can be filtered by educators by using more than 10 criteria’s to obtain the material that best suits their needs.

Accessibility support: This portal has built-in accessibility features wherein a teacher can navigate Amazon Inspire using popular screen readers and users are also able to indicate the accessibility features of resources they upload.

Simple Upload: With an easy to use and intuitive upload interface, educators can drag and drop files they want to share, add titles and publish the content, all in a few minutes.

Customer Reviews: The resources on Amazon Inspire can be reviewed and rated, helping other educators select the best resources for their needs.

This portal is in its beta-testing stage now. Even though it is accessible to only a few, it’s getting support from numerous schools, publishers and contributors. Amazon K-12 Education’s mission is to improve learning outcomes with solutions that help teachers to focus on teaching, motivating and inspiring students to learn. It aims at creating content that specifically supports the discovery, creation and distribution of digital education resources for every educator across the country.