The Orlando Pirates Learning Centre supported by Acer for Education has been assisting and improving on the numeracy and literacy skills of children living in and around the Orlando area since October 2012. The doors to the centre opened 18 October 2012 and to date 1000+ learners between the ages of 8 and 20 have been a part of the programme.
The centre is a unique project designed to assist and improve on the numeracy and literacy skills of the children thus adding a fundamental part of the development in their community. The programme was designed to enable students to add to their current schooling curriculum by providing them with a supplementary understanding of their school curriculum in the following subjects:
* Maths;
* Science;
* English; and
* ICT (information and communication technology).
The Orlando Pirates Learning Centre was fully equipped with products from the current Acer product portfolio along with full interactive white boards and Internet access thus offering invaluable training on various technology hardware and software which will prove imperative when the scholars enter the work force one day.
All pupils are required to qualify through a system run between the Orlando Pirates Learning Centre and the surrounding schools, thus enabling the offering to be available to the entire schooling fraternity within the Orlando, Soweto area.
To date the Learning Centre has engaged with fourteen schools in the community and this will extend to more schools over the course of the coming year. The Orlando Pirates Learning Centre supported by Acer has also made the facility available to teachers and adults to enable them improve their IT Literacy skills too.
Achieving excellence through determination and hard work has proved to be the recipe to success through Orlando Pirates Learning Centre supported by Acer for Education.
Orlando Pirates Learning Centre in numbers:
* 1037 learners attended the Learning Centre over the past 18 months;
* 105 adults and teachers from schools supported the learners
* 20 regular volunteers who visited the centre each week to assist learners;
* 14 primary and High Schools attended the Learning Centre;
* Four full holiday programmes delivered over the past year;
* 23% – the average improvement made by Primary School Learners in Maths;
* 20% – the average improvement made by Primary School Learners in English;
* 15% – the average improvement made by High School Learners in Math;
* 20% – the average improvement made by High School Learners in English;
* 15 000 games played on our ICT educational software Educationcity.com;
* 5624% improvement on Maths and English educational games;
* 568 hours spent improving Maths and English skills using ICT;
* 420 hours of education programmes delivered throughout each year; and
* 600 Microsoft Office documents created by learners.
Orlando Pirates Learning Centre supported by Acer for Education is headed by Learning Centre Manager, Jude Capel the Learning Centre will be responsible for providing children with the opportunity not only to learn to read and write, but to promote lifelong learning while changing the children’s mind-set towards learning whilst becoming computer literate and learning the necessary skills at the same time.
“Orlando Pirates and Acer for Education are focused on improving education in South Africa to provide infrastructure and appropriate learning conditions that help to discover and develop creativity through education,” says Jude Capel, Learning Centre manager, Orlando Pirates Learning Centre supported by Acer for Education.
“These objectives are met by assisting and improving on the numeracy and literacy skills to both scholars and educators alike within the Orlando area.”
Acer for Education student success is best served by a combination of learning and teaching platforms with interactive whiteboards, notebooks, desktops, connectivity, and as well as the data centre at the back-end. Acer’s solutions offer the flexibility of an open architecture so educators can choose the peripherals, software, instructional content, and infrastructure they need, making it easy to integrate into the classroom now and in the future.
“At Acer we have a global Business Unit which focuses solely on the Education market,” says Acer South Africa education manager, Marius Le Grange.
“We fully understand that educational requirements differ largely to those in the corporate market and The Acer Group has invested a lot into Research and Development to cater for these specific audiences,” Le Grange continues
“Acer together with Orlando Pirates Football Club have launched a Learning Centre that we hope to take to more areas within South Africa.”
Acer offers products and solutions designed with the challenges within higher education in mind. Today’s students must be taught 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, communication, and analytical thinking to compete in the global, increasingly digital marketplace. Acer is focused to aid in the accomplishment of these objectives by providing innovative and extremely cost effective solutions to the global education community.