AWS Think Big Space Opens at J.L. Simpson Middle School - Loudoun Now

Amazon Web Services newest Think Big Space successful Virginia opened Thursday astatine J.L. Simpson Middle School successful Leesburg. 

The AWS Think Big Space is an acquisition laboratory for students astatine the schoolhouse and passim the region that builds connected the division’s existing machine subject programming that was archetypal integrated successful 2017. 

Division Computer Science Supervisor Nicholas Grzeda volition pb the programming and usage of the caller 2,100-square-foot space. He said the laboratory volition supply opportunities for students to “engage with a assortment of technologies and volition heighten their computational reasoning skills.” He besides said it volition supply nonrecreational improvement opportunities for and springiness country businesses a accidental to link with the schoolhouse part done the Community Connections, CTE and Computer Science teams astatine events astatine the abstraction passim the year.  

Grzeda said he’s anxious to get started. 

“I can’t hold to get teachers successful present each day. The students are exited. They’ve travel successful and looked around. They are bare to beryllium successful here,” Grzeda said. 

He said the abstraction volition ever beryllium unfastened to students nary substance what is going connected inside.

“If a pupil needs to travel successful and usage a 3D printer for a class, I’m going to fto them travel in. It volition ever beryllium open, that’s what makes it unique,” helium said. 

He said helium looks guardant to having impermanent speakers travel successful and to make partnerships with businesses to supply work-based learning experiences and internships.

He said the extremity is to signifier symbiotic relationships with country businesses.

“For years, we’ve asked businesses for the incorrect things, money. I’d alternatively person businesses travel successful and enactment straight with the students,” helium said.  

Through a concern with the schoolhouse part and CodeVa, the abstraction volition besides service arsenic an acquisition hub for teachers successful Northern Virginia, providing escaped nonrecreational improvement programs. 

The AWS Think Big Space features an integrated situation wherever everything from the furniture, technology, and program enactment unneurotic to promote hands-on, interactive, and project-based learning, according to an announcement from Amazon. It provides opportunities to beryllium originative and imaginative by giving students entree to assorted AWS technologies – including virtual world devices, 3D Printing, drones, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

The AWS Think Big Space adds to the division’s Virginia K-12 Computer Science Pipeline program, which focuses connected teaching students astatine an aboriginal property to occupation lick successful an effort to hole them for the enactment force. The laboratory does this by providing students with a abstraction beyond the schoolroom “to further cultivate interests successful science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, (STEAM) and make consciousness of assorted vocation paths,” according to the statement.  

During the Dec. 9 the expansive opening, Amazon Future Engineer, the company’s planetary philanthropic machine subject acquisition program, announced a $1 cardinal donation to CodeVA, a nonprofit focused connected expanding entree to machine subject acquisition and literacy successful Virginia. The backing volition spell toward the enlargement of machine subject education, arsenic good arsenic teacher and nonrecreational improvement efforts astatine the caller lab.

Cornelia Robinson, planetary pb of Inclusion and Outreach for AWS said the institution was arrogant to unfastened its archetypal AWS Think Big Space successful Loudoun County.

“We powerfully judge successful the powerfulness of acquisition to unlock quality potential. Through this space, arsenic good as, the assorted acquisition programs we enactment passim Virginia, we anticipation to activate student’s tone of innovation and make the adjacent procreation of leaders,” she said. 

The AWS Think Big Space astatine J. Lupton Simpson Middle School is the 3rd abstraction funded by Amazon successful Virginia, but the archetypal successful Loudoun County. In 2019, Prince William County Public Schools opened the world’s archetypal AWS Think Big Space astatine River Oaks Elementary, and earlier this twelvemonth Arlington County Public Schools opened a abstraction astatine Wakefield High School. In addition, done Amazon Future Engineer, Amazon supports astir 700 schools crossed Virginia with high-quality machine subject curriculum, robotics clubs, and project-based learning.