By Bankole Orimisan
THE 13 years old student of Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls based in Lagos, Chidera Nwadike, has emerged at the 2011 Certiport Worldwide Microsoft PowerPoint competition organised by the IT raining company, New Horizons, in San Diego as one of the top four finalists to have excelled where over 228,000 university students from 57 countries competed to demonstrate their mastery of Microsoft Office products.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Tim Akano said, that was certainly a pointer to the fact that all hope was not lost for our educational system in Nigeria and a further proof that things ware taking a positive turn for the better under the present tenure of the Goodluck/Jonathan administration.
According to Akano, Nigeria could not afford to miss out of the Information Technology era as it was the case in the various eras of the past, going by our population and the expectations of the rest of the world.
The first and only African to compete at the event in the Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 category where she placed 4th, after coming top overall at the National Competition in Nigeria in the Microsoft PowerPoint competition under the tutelage of New Horizons instructors, having tried several local and international IT (Indian) training companies mostly incapable of delivering the desired results.
Akano, who also urged encouraged schools to partner with New Horizons to advantage of exceptional skills in training the students so as to attend the upcoming 2012 Microsoft Competition, said that this certification would also earn the students credit point in UK and U.S.A universities.
In his words, impressed by the calibre of students from all over the world, who have learned advanced, certifiable Microsoft skills,” said Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president, Office Product Management Group, Microsoft Corp.
“It was great to see so many students mastering Microsoft Office 2010. Office is used on more than one billion PCs worldwide, and these students who are deeply engaged in the product, which will help them realise increased productivity and efficiency as they use these desktop applications for school assignments and on the job.”
He said, “this year's contest marks the introduction of the 2010 Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Word and Excel exams, and also includes PowerPoint 2007 for the first time in the history of the competition.”
“In its tenth year, the Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office continues to grow in popularity – we had a 49 per cent increase in the number of students who participated from all over the world in 2011 compared to 2010,” said Ray Kelly, CEO, Certiport.
“We hold the competition to motivate and recognise students for mastering key technical skills that will help them excel in college and build their resume. I was very impressed by the winners, and holding the title of ‘World Champion’ will be a valuable asset as they continue in their professional lives.”
He noted that in the concluding round, competitors participated in timed, unique tests to demonstrate their ability to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations for the information presented in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This year, Certiport added a new component to the Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office. Each Word 2010 and Excel 2010 contestant was required to take the standard MOS exam and was also asked to recreate an existing Word 2010 document or Excel 2010 workbook from a provided, printed example.
“Over 3.5 million people worldwide have taken one or more Microsoft Office specialist exams to receive an objective validation of their skills with a performance-based test,” said Lutz Ziob, general manager, Microsoft Learning.
“We worked with business leaders to understand what they expect their future employees to know when we developed the MOS exams, giving us a very well defined learning and certification solution. The Worldwide Competition is indicative of the popularity of the MOS programme, and it gives students a badge of honour that guarantees to employers that they know what it takes to be successful with Microsoft products.”
Winners in each of the five categories bagged a $5,000 scholarship each, with Malaysian Clement Ng Chwin Chiat in mastering Microsoft Word 2010, Chen Xing of China in Microsoft Excel 2010, Japanese Mizuki Terao (Microsoft Word 2007), Briton Rebecca Rickwood (Microsoft Excel 2007) and Taiwanese Liao Yu-Xuan (Microsoft PowerPoint 2007).
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