Pre-College Initiative

Regional high schools comprise an invaluable first link for young people in the cloud computing career pathway. In the design of the cloud curriculum, a new Cloud Literacy Course will be created as an entry point for the new pathway. This course will be created for delivery at the community college or at regional high schools through dual-credit programs (College Credit Plus in Ohio and High School Dual Enrollment in Virginia), offering pre-college students the ability to earn college credit.

Leveraging this course, the initiative will create outreach strategies to promote career awareness of the cloud technology pathway to new students, counselors, and parents. The Cloud project team will share career opportunities, industry guest speakers, and tools to prepare students for entry courses in information technology. The project will create a seamless transition for students from the Cloud Literacy Course to the community college Cloud Fundamentals Certificate and then into Associate of Applied Science degree programs.

In Year Two, the project will create an accelerated option and host a Cloud Literacy Institute for high school and entry-level college students. This summer institute will be developed with industry partners to teach students the IT career pathway that leads to cloud computing. The camp will utilize a design process as scaffolding for students to learn that cloud computing is a skill that involves proposing solutions based on analyzing data, computation, database, and security requirements. Fundamentals of IT networking infrastructure and security are needed to select the architectural best practices.

Through the Cloud Literacy Institute, students will learn the basics of cloud computing through a design-based project that will give students a budget and services needed by a company such as PaaS, SaaS, and Iaas. Throughout the institute, students will work in teams to determine the costs associated with designing and deploying a cloud computing solution that is manageable, secure, and scalable.