by Hugh C.n. Miller | Feb 22, 2021 | Old News
What’s in the Pipeline for ORT SA in 2021?
2021 is the year that ORT SA will aspire to continue bridging the digital and knowledge divide.
We won’t focus on going back to ‘normal’, as it was, because our mission has always been to revolutionise the workplace. We will continue to focus on reimagining and reshaping the future.
We do that through relevant and cutting edge training and mentoring of schools’ leadership, teachers and learners, post-school youth and business owners and professionals.
Education has been getting a lot of criticism for not fulfilling its purpose. Some people think that schools and universities are not preparing our children for the world of work and are “out of touch” with the real workplace and the skills and knowledge it requires.
Keeping Ahead of Trends
For education to fulfil its mission, ORT SA will be looking ahead at trends and respond to the skills and talent required. We aim to keep renovating our programmes and incorporate green economy, gaming as well as soft skills and mental coping tools. All along ensuring, we bridge gender inequality and the digital divide.
The global lockdown raised awareness towards the importance of a green economy and, as the public, governments and investors wake up to climate change, the clean – energy industry is gaining momentum.
As an overview of the new energy system emerges, we will examine the implications of education and skills development. Taking into consideration, professions related to renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
Bridging Gender Inequality
Various research (such as by NICD) showed that women were disproportionally affected by the Covid19 crisis. They were more likely than men to lose their jobs, as well as taking a share of the additional child care as a result of school closure due to lockdown.
At ORT SA, we will continue to run Coding and other IT programmes promoting female participation and raising awareness of IT professions not “only as a profession for male”.
Gaming as an Employment Opportunity
The global pandemic has resulted in more people staying home, which was a great boon for the gaming industry. Some sources say the gaming industry has actually eclipsed the film industry as the most popular (and profitable) form of entertainment worldwide.
This means there will be more available jobs in this industry, however, research shows that for youth to get into these professions, intervention and education must be introduced from an early stage.
Upskilling youth from schooling level, one can ensure that these youth will have a high likelihood of being employable. Online gaming is not for entertainment only and can be used for educational purposes, gamification in the workplace and social change.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has been a trigger to transformation in different sectors and industries. The education and skills development sector need to have a discussion on how we adapt and transform the offering so as not to become redundant and affronted.
About ORT SA
ORT was started in 1936 purely as a fundraising entity. From 1936 to 1994 the organization existed to raise funds for various causes within World ORT. In 1994 with the change in government, ORT SA became an operational organization and began to implement various programmes within South Africa.
ORT SA is a multi-faceted, proactive and reputable organization. It thrives on developing teachers, youth, businesses and communities, by improving the standard of education, so that all can achieve a better life.
For ORT SA, education is more than basic schooling. It’s about empowerment and support. Only then can poverty be eradicated and meaningful lives built.
ORT SA is an educational and vocational NGO BBBEE Level 1 which provides state of the art training and mentoring in STEM, IT education and entrepreneurship.
For more details go to www.ortsa.org.za
ORT JET is a division of ORT SA and was established in 2005 to create an empowering support structure for small Jewish business owners and people with business ideas in South Africa. ORT JET aims to facilitate business growth and financial sustainability by offering mentoring, training and networking opportunities.
Please visit www.ortjet.org.za to view our upcoming training events.
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Oct 11, 2019 | Uncategorized
In response to a video about the first robot teacher introduced in a schoolroom in India, ORT SA’s CEO, Ariellah Rosenberg had this to say:
Technology will change education but I’m not sure in that way (with a robot teacher). Note that there is still a human teacher in the class. And the robot pretty much provides frontal teaching which is basically taking pedagogy backward, not forward. Also, as a parent,I am not sure I’d send my kids to this classroom.
When it comes to unique strengths , technology will not be able to fully replace what a human can do . Technology can only be modified so much, but it cannot fully replace a human being .
Think of it this way , a human can clean in small areas where the mop may reach whereas a robot ,may not be able to fit in those areas ..’unique strengths’
Technology helps us remove obstacles so we can be more productive and lead better, easier even healthier lives. It can teach and even motivate us but it can’t inspire! That’s why I don’t think a robot will replace teachers .
It could be a teaching tool that a teacher should use to get their students to achieve their greatest potential but the human element will and should always be there.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnh7WCqgcz8
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Jul 24, 2019 | Uncategorized
Welcome to ORT SA!
People who work for ORT SA share many things in common. They are passionate, innovative, professional…they hold onto ORT’s values but mostly are driven with ORT SA’s mission of making people employable and creating employment opportunities
We do that through our ORT SA STEM Academy: working with schools, through STEM education, IT, coding and leadership training, with the understanding that in order to equip the generation of today with the skills for tomorrow we need to start as early as possible.
We do so through our ORT SA Skills and Enterprise Development Academy with our post schooling programmes in IT, skills development and entrepreneurship with the understanding that to become employable one needs the skills, life skills but also work experience. This is why we partnered with the YES Campaign and also offer learnerships with different SETAs
Small businesses are a vital pillar which the country’s economy relies on, and ORT Jet ( a division of ORT SA) has assisted thousands of businesses with providing the tools and support to entrepreneurs and small business to become financially sustainable.
The ORT SA Eric and Sheila Samson IT Academy was established to bridge the digital divide of knowledge, skills and awareness towards IT career options. And becoming a Cisco Networking Academy has allowed ORT SA to offer hundreds of unemployed youth with IT tools and skills.
Our new Career Hub was created to expose people and youth to career options; to what the “jobs of the future” are all about, to let them explore their strengths, passion and future paths as well as providing experience and skills transfer to make sure they are ready and equipped for the workplace.
ORT SA prides itself with its affiliation to World ORT and its legacy of almost 140 years fulfilling its vision of ‘Educating for Life’ and impacting communities through education.
We help businesses with their BBBEE and fulfilling their CSI strategy or vision.
We help government with its efforts to improve education and skills development and we help businesses to improve their profitability and financial sustainability
Join ORT SA as a member, a Youth Club member, volunteer, donor, corporate partner or a beneficiary and be part of an organisation that uses the power of education to make a change in the world.
Ariellah Rosenberg
ORT SA CEO
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Jun 19, 2019 | Uncategorized
WHAT IF OUR ANCESTORS WERE INVITED TO A TECH SHOW?
By Ariellah Rosenberg, Chief Executive Officer, ORT South Africa
If we were to organise an exhibition of current technologies and invite our ancestors and descendants from the past to attend, what would their reaction be?
Our forefathers walked in the desert for 40 years to reach their desired destination. Imagine! After all the suffering, starving and struggling in the harsh climate and tough terrain to find out that with ‘flying technologies’ they could have made the journey within an hour! Moreover, with global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, it would have been so much easier to navigate their way. And oh! How crazy they’d think we are, counting our steps, with IoT devices, and sending information to a ‘cloud’…not to ask for direction from G-d but to…monitor our health!
Imagine Florence Nightingale, known for founding the modern discipline of nursing, and a key figure in introducing new professional training standards for nursing, visiting a robot display to reveal moving machines replacing the service of human care. Japan’s aging population (30% of its population is older than 65), faces a crisis of shortage of human resource in eldercare. To resolve this predicament, robots have been placed in nursing homes. Robots that move, cry and cuddle are replacing the human work force, from lifting people from bed to entertaining them, with much success. The elderly absolutely love them!
All those involved in getting our internet to where it is today! Who would have imagined that with all the impact of the internet on our culture, commerce, communication and technology that it will also generate the biggest crime, globally? According to the latest information, cybercrime will cost the world more than six trillion dollars annually by 2021. It will be more profitable than the combined global trade of all illegal drugs!
However, if we had Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein entering some of the current classrooms, they’d most probably see no difference from their own classroom, a hundred or so years ago. They will also notice that not much has changed with teaching and assessments, using a curriculum that is mostly outdated with techniques and pedagogies that prepared children for the industrial jobs of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Companies invest in enormous amounts of research to explore the use and impact of new technologies in the global economy (McKinsey, World Economic Forum and so many other papers and reports have been published on the topic.) But what about education? Isn’t it time that we explore transforming education to keep up with the pace of change and to prepare our future generation for the world of work?
We now know more than we knew in the past on how children learn and we know that new technologies are transforming jobs as we know them. But we continue to skill our children for jobs that soon will vanish.
It is time that industries, corporations, governments and educationalists work together to transform education through updated policies, curriculum and implementation of technologies as tools to assist with the digital transformation. It is time that we start implementing the use of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and IoT in emulating successful methodologies and incorporating them in our classrooms.
The return on our investment will be higher than any business will ever generate. And who knows, – the fruits of these investments could
be showcased one day in an exhibition featuring future technologies produced by our own future generation.
@Ariellah @ORT_SA
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Apr 4, 2019 | Uncategorized
When the original Blade Runner movie was screened in 1982, it went almost unnoticed. But the Ridley Scott adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel quickly became a cult favourite, and then acknowledged as a seminal vision of our future urban landscape.
That being the case, why are we not yet living in that future? This was the fairly standard question asked at the Cisco Live conference in Barcelona this week, but the answer was somewhat surprising.
“We should have humanoid, lifelike robots among us. Instead, we have Sophia the robot, who is not exactly lifelike and quite creepy,” said Jeremy Bevan, Cisco vice president of marketing for Europe Middle East, Africa and Russia, during the opening keynote address. “We should be seduced by digital billboards everywhere. Maybe we do have that in Times Square and some shopping malls. Maybe soon, as in Blade Runner, we’ll have giant ads that say you can start a new life on a different planet.”
Yet, said Bevan, in some ways we have gone far beyond the Blade Runner vision. For example, talking to our computers is now standard. Going into a phone booth to make a video call is downright old-fashioned, as the technology for video calls is now available wherever we are.
“Films are a reflection of how things are today and how they might progress; what could be possible. The connection between what we do and what is possible, is imagination. It is the most important thing we have to make our lives better, from the smallest things in our personal lives to the way we transform businesses. All the way through to things that can solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Technology is truly an enabler of our imagination.”
Rather than offering movie visions to prove his point, however, he presented the case study of the largest port in Europe, that of Rotterdam, which handles 130 000 ships a year. Already, the complexities of combining shipping logistics with weather and other data is a massively complex channel. Using Internet of Things technology and data services supplied by Cisco and IBM, the Port can now predict precise conditions hours in advance.
In the next six years, Rotterdam expects to welcome its first autonomous ships – self-steering and self-navigating vessels. By 2030, it plans for a combination of the Internet of Things, data analytics and cloud computing to make it possible for completely automated handling of these ships, from docking to unloading and loading, without direct human intervention.
Considering that around 85% of globally traded goods travels by ship, the project will point the way to more efficient and more cost-effective international trade. It is also a vision that goes beyond Blade Runner, in imagining a more sustainable and environmentally cleaner future. Ultimately, says Bevan, it will enhance human quality of life.
“You might think the stories we share are about technology to solve big problems, but it’s also about people’s lives that are transformed,” said Bevan, insisting that such projects underpin Cisco’s vision of “technology for good”.
If he is right, our descendants may never need those Blade Runner ads for finding a better life off-planet.
- Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
- Arthur Goldstuck is ORT SA’s IT Ambassador and was a guest speaker at the recent launch of the ORT SA CareerHub: the educational journey to your career destination.
