AWS Data Center Tour 2:
Keeping Data Safe and Sustainable
Teacher Toolkit

On the Keeping Data Safe and Green tour, students will explore how data centers keep their data safe and sustainable so they don’t have to worry about uploading their information to the cloud. Students will learn how data centers use a natural process to keep servers from overheating, how redundancy and sensors ensure data is always available, cyber and physical security measures to keep data protected, and sustainability efforts to protect the environment. Along the way, they’ll meet a data center engineer operator (DCEO), control technician, cybersecurity specialist, and sustainability specialist.

Keeping Data Safe and Green is aligned to the following CSTA standards.

• 1B-IC-18 Discuss computing technologies that have changed the world, and express how those technologies influence, and are influenced by, cultural practices.
• 1B-CS-01 Describe how internal and external parts of computing devices function to form a system.
• 1B-CS-02 Model how computer hardware and software work together as a system to accomplish tasks.
• 2-NI-05 Explain how physical and digital security measures protect electronic information.
• 3A-NI-05 Give examples to illustrate how sensitive data can be affected by malware and other attacks.
• 3A-IC-24 Evaluate the ways computing impacts personal, ethical, social, economic, and cultural practices.

The tour is aligned to the following disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices.

• Crosscutting Concept: Cause and Effect Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted.
• Crosscutting Concept: Systems and System Models A system is an organized group of related objects or components; models can be used for understanding and predicting the behavior of systems.
• Crosscutting Concept: Energy and Matter Tracking energy and matter flows, into, out of, and within systems helps one understand their system’s behavior.
• 4-PS3-2 Energy Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
• 4-ESS3-1 Earth and Human Activity Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment.
• 4-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.
• 5-ESS3-1 Earth and Human Activity Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
• MS-ESS2-4 Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth’s systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.
• MS-ESS3-3 Earth and Human Activity Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
• MS-ESS3-4 Earth and Human Activity Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.
• MS-ESS3-5 Earth and Human Activity Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
• MS-PS3-3 Energy Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.
• MS-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
• MS-ETS1-1 Engineering Design Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
• HS-ESS3-1 Earth and Human Activity Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
  HS-ESS3-4 Earth and Human Activity Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
• HS-ESS3-1 Earth and Human Activity Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
• HS-PS3-4Energy Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that the transfer of thermal energy when two components of different temperature are combined within a closed system results in a more uniform energy distribution among the components in the system (second law of thermodynamics).
• HS-ETS1-3 Engineering Design Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.

The tour, and all materials included in the accompanying Teacher Toolkit, are provided to teachers at no cost. You do not need a paid Kahoot! account to take the tour - sign up for a free teacher account on Kahoot! or utilize the solo play links on our website to play completely free.

The Uncovering Cloud Computing Kahoot! tour is designed to take 30 minutes.

We recommend the tour for any grade 4 and above. The tour includes content accessible to each grade and teachers can use the Teacher Toolkit to adjust learning how they see fit.

The following STEM topics will be introduced and explained in real-life context during the Data Safety and Sustainability tour: infrastructure, evaporative cooling, redundancy, sensors, cybersecurity, malware, machine learning, encryption, sustinability, carbon dioxide, carbon zero, and water positivity.

See the Teacher Toolkit to learn more.

Yes. For Kahoot!, you can either share your screen and students play on their own devices, share your screen and students play together as a class, or assign the Kahoot! to your students to complete individually.

We do not collect personal student information on either tour. If a teacher does have a Kahoot! accounts, they can assign the tour to their students to track their students’ progress, but individuals’ information is not shared with Amazon. During the tour, students will answer 2 poll questions about their intent to persist in careers in STEM and their overall thoughts on the tour. These questions are multiple choice and do not collect any PII from students.

Yes, absolutely. Students can also play the Kahoot! version of the tour on their own.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Videos are embedded from YouTube, and if blocked by a firewall, will appear as black screens or not play. If your school has YouTube blocked, please have them whitelist the links to each video in the tour.

Please reach out to afe-contact@amazon.com for any questions.