Amazon has launched a new program with the aim of educating young people to become cloud experts of the future, The Next Web reports.

AWS Educate aims to “help educators and students use real-world cloud technology in the classroom.”

The program will be free for educational institutions, teachers and students, following a successful application. If accepted, credits for AWS services for testing (like Amazon EC2, S3 and Amazon RDS) will be provided.

There’s also Web training and self-study sessions to give hands-on experience with the technologies.

Amazon said it will also hold real-life and virtual events, as well as provide a wide range of materials for students and teachers.

With cloud computing looking set to be a mainstay of technology, tooling up the next generation makes a lot of sense. Particularly for Amazon if it can get a generation of cloud experts learning and locked-in to using its own tools, TNW says.