Start Your Student’s Education in Cloud
Saturday, January 25th is the second annual Women in Cloud Day established by the State of Washington. Top women leaders in Cloud are celebrating at the Women in Cloud Summit with business, leadership and technical workshops to network and exchange ideas.
I’m attending with my 10th grade daughter to help her see there’s more to prepare for besides taking technical classes, earning good grades and participating in her local STEM group. For parents and teachers who want to encourage young students to begin a Cloud-focused career, here are some ideas:
Start understanding the world of Cloud. Cloud isn’t just for programmers and developers. Careers are plentiful across sales, marketing, finance, training, social, channel leadership, product management and community outreach roles. If your students’ core interest isn’t in IT, they can easily wrap their desired function around a Cloud solution, company or idea to build a career.
Spend a few minutes each week having them follow Cloud companies and industry leaders on social media. This will help build fundamentals, learn the lingo and understand trends to render educated opinions. There are a lot of articles written about the impact Amazon, Snapchat and Uber have on our world. Branch out to see what Gartner and Forbes are saying about the next generation of Cloud companies such as Plaid, Stripe, Toast and Grand Rounds.
Realize voice is powerful and students need public speaking skills. Practice to get comfortable in front of an audience whether on stage, at a conference table or on a video call. Help students find their voice by encouraging 3-5 minute presentations on known topics: golf, fashion, biology, etc. If they have a passion and like their topic, it’s easier to talk to it. They can then move into more challenging themes like STEM to create ideas, layer in verifiable facts and end with a call to action.
Invest in education and leverage technology assets available. Microsoft offers O365 with Teams to students free of charge as part of their ‘empowering every student on the planet to achieve more’ initiative. Every day we work with school systems adopting Microsoft Teams for student and teacher usage. We drive value by Putting Voice in Microsoft Teams; your student might invent the next Tiktok by embracing technology, collaborating and sharing ideas in Cloud.
On January 28th, Voice in Teams and Step CG are participating in the US Education Modern Workplace Partner Hub event to drive awareness on how Putting Voice in Microsoft Teams drives higher faculty satisfaction, removes legacy phone tethers and enhances productivity by enabling educators with more hands-on time to empower students.
Drop me a line if you are seeking more information on Cloud, Cloud Careers, investing in STEAM/STEM or Microsoft Teams.