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.
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Mar 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
“Last year, we promised a series of Career Guidance talks and we have actually done more than that. We have, in fact, developed the ORT SA CareerHub,” says Ariellah Rosenberg, ORT SA’s CEO, who is the visionary behind the idea.
Through a series of talks and workshops, the CareerHub will help high school students, university students, parents, teachers and even those who feel ‘stuck’ in their path, to “Explore, Expose and Experience” their way through the quagmire of choosing a career.
“The choices can be daunting ,” says Rosenberg, “You’re 18 years old, finished school and most probably, experiencing the ‘end of childhood’ as you knew it. You are faced with a life-time decision, or so you feel, about your career path. All of us have been in a similar situation… ‘the road not taken’… ‘jobs of the future’… so much pressure for relatively young souls that have being part of the schooling system for more than a decade. A system where almost everything is dictated, including your dress code, the time you wake up and the curriculum. Now, you have to decide yourself which path to take. If to learn: what to learn, where and when? “
The ORT SA CareerHub will be focused on Exploring the individual’s skills, attributes and strengths when seeking a career path, Exposing participants to the jobs of the future and giving them the Experience with practical workshops.
The CareerHub is launching on 2 April 2019 with ORT SA’s IT Ambassador, the internationally renowned writer, analyst and technology commentator, Arthur Goldstuck and ORT SA IT Ambassador, speaking about ‘jobs of the future’.
Booking essential: ora@ortsa.org.za
The next in the series will be on 16th April 2019 at 6pm: Lorraine Silverman on Career Assessments.
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Feb 15, 2019 | Old News
YOUTH AMBASSADORS TO FLY ORT FLAG
In November 2018, thirteen excited teenagers from high schools across the Johannesburg area, spent an incredible week in Argentina together with 400 youth from around the globe. This World ORT/ Scholas Occurentes Youth Summit was held under the auspices of Pope Francis. Coming home with the experiences of a life-time and reflecting on their remarkable interactions, learning opportunities and the incredible friendships forged, the students sought to pass on their experience to others. Thus was born the ORT SA Youth Club.
The thirteen ORT SA Youth Ambassadors hail from Ivory Park Secondary, Alexandra High, Kwabhekilanga Secondary in Alexandra, King David Linksfield High and King David Victory Park High.
ORT South Africa welcomes all high school pupils to join the ORT SA Youth Club. The club will give access to the many World ORT opportunities; to meet people from all over the world – virtually and face-to-face, to attend interesting talks and workshops (watch out for ORT SA Career Guidance series), opportunities to volunteer for community service hours and more.
Sign up for the ORT SA Youth Club online or email:ora@ortsa.org.za
PICTURE: ORT SA YOUTH AMBASSADOR INAUGURATION AT KING DAVID VICTORY PARK ASSEMBLY 1 FEBRUARY 2019.
Left to right: Mrs Meryl Malkin (Accompanying Teacher KDL) Ariellah Rosenberg (CEO ORT SA) Mr Andrew Baker (Headmaster KDVP) Shirili Rosenberg (KDL) Daniel Rome (KDL) Ziyanda Njele (Ivory Park High) Lgopalong Masoga (Alexandra High) Dylan Martheze (KDVP) Lora Sefoloshe (Kwabhekilanga High Alexandra) Raizel Lampert (KDVP) Daniel Engelberg (KDL) Serufe Molefe (Accompanying Teacher ORT SA) Mandy Gruzd (Accompanying Teacher KDVP). Seated: Hannah Rome (KDL) Leora Porter (KDL) Lauren Gruzd (KDVP) Samantha Gottschalk (KDL) Shayna Goss (KDL)
