Amazon Launches Digital Education Service

Amazon has already done its part to disrupt one aspect of the educational industry by opening up the previously narrow textbook resale market. However, Amazon’s education division has even bigger plans for the classroom itself.

Amazon announced Monday (June 27) that it had officially launched Amazon Inspire, a free digital learning resource platform intended to help teachers locate and leverage materials appropriate for every age level when designing lessons plans or during classroom activities. Rohit Agarwal, general manager of Amazon K-12 Education, explained that Amazon Inspire will help teachers, like those already using it in New York City’s public school system, spend more time on the parts of their jobs that really matter.

“Amazon joins educators from around the country in recognizing the power of digital learning to transform the classroom by creating a personalized, engaging learning environment for all students,” Agarwal said in a statement. “However, we also know that making that promise a reality is a time consuming proposition, and teachers tell us that they spend upwards of 12 hours a week searching for and curating resources for classroom instruction, placing a high degree of trust in resources shared by their peers. With Amazon Inspire, we aim 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 was created as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen program that calls for more open-sourced educational software at every level. And while Amazon usually does everything in its power to keep users within its own ecosystem, the eCommerce giant seems to have waived that philosophy in the interest of an educational tool meant for all.