Amazon Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tours bring real-world learning to the classroom

Amazon is supporting teachers and young people with a new series of Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tours, which form part of Amazon Future Engineer, a purpose-led childhood-to-career programme designed to inspire, educate and enable children and young adults from low-income backgrounds to build careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

 

This school year, Amazon is providing teachers with the chance to immerse their pupils in a real-world learning environment with their free Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tours. Students will discover how computer science, state-of-the-art engineering and incredible people each play a part in delivering customer orders at Amazon.

 

The free tours are now available to all UK primary and secondary schools and provide students with the opportunity to put STEM and computer science into context, covering topics such as cloud computing, algorithms, machine learning, and quality control. To see what to expect on an Amazon Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tour, watch this video.

 

Alongside the Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tours, teachers can engage their students with computer science concepts before and after the tour using a free downloadable Teacher Toolkit, which includes interactive curriculum-linked slides, worksheets and videos supplementing tour topics, offering students insight into the world of Amazon’s customer fulfilment process.  Amazon is supporting teachers who are looking to showcase the opportunities a career in STEM can offer.  Students will get the chance to find out a host of interesting facts, see life behind the scenes and hear from Amazon’s very own engineers in a live Q&A session after the tour.

 

STEM-based careers will grow to be an integral part of our future and educating pupils about the opportunities available to them is important. Research commissioned by Amazon from Capital Economics showed that the UK needs an additional 38,000 workers with computer science-related skills, including 21,000 computer science graduates, to meet labour demands every year – or the economy could lose out on an estimated £33 billion a year by 20301. Amazon Future Engineer was established to help close that gap and has since launched initiatives such as bursary schemes for women computer science students, free virtual coding programmes, supporting the recruitment and training of secondary school computer science teachers and more. 

 

Lauren Kisser, Director at Amazon’s Development Centre in Cambridge, said: “There is a greater need for STEM skills than ever before as technology continues to transform careers, industries and every sector of our economy. By launching the Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tours specifically for students as part of our Amazon Future Engineer programme we hope to showcase the variety of exciting opportunities available through a career in STEM and inspire the next generation of engineers and computer scientists.” 

 

The tours, which have seen over 5,000 students take part to date, provide a way for students to experience a class trip and be exposed to real-world learning, without leaving the classroom. Feedback from teachers who have signed up and attended a Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tour has been positive with an average satisfaction score of 4.3 out of 5. 

 

By signing up for a free Fulfilment Centre tour before 30 November 2021, teachers who attend a tour will be entered into a prize draw to win a £1,000 Amazon Gift Card for their school. There is no better time to book a Virtual Fulfilment Centre Tour and educate the next generation about the opportunities available with a career in STEM. T&C’s apply.