National Institute Of Education And Amazon Web Services Launch New Technology For Education Centre (TEC)
The National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NIE NTU, Singapore) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), have signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to accelerate educational innovation and advance research in educational technology.
This partnership will empower NIE staff and students to transform ideas into functional prototypes, enhancing learning and addressing real-world issues. It will also provide learning opportunities for Singapore’s educators to deepen their competencies in cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and emerging digital tools. A key initiative under this MOU is the launch of the Technology for Education Centre (TEC), a new innovation hub located on the NIE’s campus that will drive digital transformation in education.
This collaboration paves the way for an innovative journey in Singapore’s education system—one that reimagines what it means to teach and learn in the age of intelligent technologies. It envisions a future where every educator is empowered with AI-driven insights, classrooms transform into agile experimentation of educational innovations, and research and practice converge to fuel educational breakthroughs. By focusing on three strategic priorities—preparing future-ready educators, accelerating applied innovation, and positioning Singapore as a global beacon of educational technology excellence—this partnership signals a collective ambition to shape not just the future of teaching but the future of learning itself.
Together, AWS and the NIE aim to collaborate on advancing applied innovation in education and supporting educators in utilising technology to address real-world challenges. The partnership will facilitate the development of new ideas and digital competencies in response to the evolving needs across academia, industry, schools, and beyond. This aligns with the NIE’s mission to develop future-ready educators, reinforcing the Values, Skills, and Knowledge (V3SK) framework that forms the cornerstone of Singapore’s teacher education model.
Key highlights of the collaboration include:
- Establishment of the Technology for Education Centre (TEC)
- Cloud-focused learning initiatives
Learning initiatives, including AWS Skill Builder and cloud-based simulations, will provide NIE staff and educators with opportunities to strengthen their competencies in cloud technologies and the use of AI technologies in teaching, learning, and research.
- Advancing applied research in AI, data analytics, and emerging technologies
Joint research initiatives will enable the NIE researchers to go deeper into data-driven approaches to education, translating AI and analytics into actionable insights that improve teaching practices, learner outcomes, and policy development.
- Service-learning projects creating real-world impact
By leveraging AWS’s generative AI (Gen AI) technologies such as Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q Developer, student-led service-learning initiatives will design and deploy practical solutions that address real-world issues, fostering student agency and problem-solving skills, and a deeper sense of community responsibility.
- Experiential platforms to spark student innovation with AI
Through hands-on workshops, hackathons, and technology showcases, students and staff will explore real-world applications of AI for education — creating prototypes, testing ideas, and developing the confidence and creativity needed to become future-ready innovators.
Creation of the TEC on the NIE’s campus provides frictionless access for staff and students to co-develop applied education technologies through prototyping, testing, and industry collaboration.
The Technology for Education Centre
Located on the NIE's campus, the TEC will be a collaborative hub where educators, students, researchers, and staff can develop pedagogically sound and ethically responsible technological solutions for education with AWS and industry partners. The Centre will provide a secure environment to explore state-of-the-art technologies and applications, while also allowing industry partners to test their technologies in educational settings. With dedicated prototyping zones, the TEC aims to shape the future of technology-enhanced teaching and learning guided by sound learning principles. More features of the TEC in Annex B.
Advancing Singapore's AI-Ready Education Ecosystem
This collaboration exemplifies educational innovation as a core pillar of the NIE’s AI for Education strategy under AIEd@NIE, aligning with Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0’s (NAIS 2.0) vision for building an AI-ready workforce. It also aligns with both the Research and Development (R&D) and Community pillars of AWS’s AI Spring Singapore initiative, which seeks to accelerate the adoption of AI by nurturing community development and advancing research in AI technologies and their applications.
Professor Liu Woon Chia, NIE Director, said, “This strategic partnership signifies a shared commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform education in Singapore. Together, we are transforming how teachers teach, how students learn, and how research shapes real-world policy and practice.”
Elsie Tan, Country Manager, Worldwide Public Sector, Singapore at AWS, added, "Educators shape our future workforce. By combining the NIE's expertise with AWS's AI technologies in experiential learning, we're supporting Singapore's Smart Nation vision to develop digitally - empowered teachers ready to address tomorrow's challenges with confidence and digital fluency."
New Pathways to Educational Excellence
This partnership will also drive applied innovation in education by focusing on the practical use of cloud and emerging technologies in teaching and learning environments. As part of the collaboration, AWS will provide access to a range of digital learning resources, including self-paced courses and training programmes such as AWS Skill Builder. These resources are designed to enhance the existing digital curriculum at the NIE and strengthen competencies in cloud technologies among educators and NIE staff.
Future initiatives include co-hosted hackathons, hands-on workshops and student-led roundtables or forums discussing ethical considerations of AI in education. Discussion topics include biases, surveillance, data privacy, and human-AI collaboration. The future initiatives will provide platforms for educators, researchers, and industry to experiment with and adopt new education technologies.
Through this partnership, the NIE reaffirms its position as a global leader in educational transformation, shaping the future of learning in the ASEAN region and beyond. This collaboration is not just about today’s advancements but about continuously (re)defining the possibilities of 21st-century education.
