التكنولوجيا وأخبارها بوابة الإمارات لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والإتصالات
Avaya Enables Students To Continue To Learn Across Africa as 250 Million Children Lose Access to Physical Classrooms
Santa Clara, Calif. & Accra, Ghana As many as 250 million
children across Africa are currently unable to access
primary and secondary schools as a result of COVID-19-
related closures. Analysts have shared concerns that this
may create a lost generation of learners, causing many
children to leave school prematurely. Avaya (NYSE: AVYA),
a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify
communications and collaboration, is helping to stem this
loss across the continent by enabling students to stay on
track with their studies using Avaya Spaces™.
Avaya Spaces, the all-in-one video collaboration app for the
digital workplace, changes the way works gets done. It
helps bring together distributed groups of people instantly
with immersive work spaces where they can message,
meet, share content and manage tasks from a browser or
mobile device, and provides an easy, secure and effective
way to collaborate in the cloud.
Earlier this year, Avaya Spaces was offered for free to
educational institutions worldwide, giving them all the
meeting and team collaboration features they needed to
keep students learning and curriculums on track.
With Avaya Spaces, African schools such as Icon
International School in Ghana, Charter College in South
Africa, and Waldorf Woodlands in Kenya, have kept
students safely engaged in their education by using the app
to create virtual classrooms that can be accessed securely
from anywhere on any device.
Analysts and researchers have noted the importance of
easy-to-use collaboration tools for education institutions to
maintain their connections with students, to support bright
futures in the face of today’s challenges. “Investing in
training and education is the best way to secure the future
prosperity of the African region,” said Adrian Ho, Practise
Leader, Enterprise Advanced Digital Services, Omdia. “The
COVID-19 pandemic has made its struggles more
challenging. Harnessing technologies like Avaya Spaces will
help bridge the training and educational gaps of the future
workforce in Africa, allowing the region to be globally
competitive.”
“The crisis has forced educators across Africa and around
the world to adapt in order to avoid losing educational
progress made throughout the first half of the academic
year,” said Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International.
“With our Avaya Spaces offer, we have helped teachers and
students continue to focus on education, and we’re proud
to have played a small part in seeing off worries of a lost
generation of learners.”
Icon International School, a leading Ghanaian institution
that caters to learners from multiple grade levels, is one
such school that has turned to technology to ensure the
continued delivery of education for its students. Initially
getting by with various freemium consumer apps, the
school eventually put in place a comprehensive remote
learning program for students using Avaya Spaces. The
cloud-based video and collaboration app enables Icon to
seamlessly deliver a Montessori-style education across
geographies.
“With Avaya Spaces, teachers are able to attend to the
individual needs of every learner,” said Elizabeth Owusu-
Bennoah, Proprietress, Icon International School. “We have
found the task management features particularly effective,
as they enable us to plan, type out assignments, and follow
up on them all within the same app. Previously, there was a
lot of copying and pasting between various different apps,
but now everything is held within an easy-to-access online
space. With Avaya Spaces, we are able to create a rich and
academically stimulating environment that students can
access from the safety and comfort of their own homes.”
In South Africa, Charter College International High School
moved classrooms online with Avaya Spaces to enable
continued learning amid a shutdown of schools across the
country. Working with Avaya, Charter College deployed
business licenses for its teachers and staff – enough to
support over 1,000 student users in virtual classrooms.
“We join a growing number of educational institutions
worldwide who have had to temporarily cancel in-person
classes, but we’ve worked extremely quickly to move
lessons online and ensure that our students are still being
provided with a top education,” said Alison Dodge, Principal
at Charter College International High School.
Despite South African schools now being officially open,
Charter College will continue using Avaya Spaces to keep
students and teachers engaged and collaborating – and can
maintain a continuity of education if classes shut again.
“Our first priority is the safety of our students. During a
global pandemic, our goal is to provide continuity of their
classes while ensuring we’re following the most up-to-date
health advice from government bodies. Avaya Spaces has
already proven indispensable with its task management
features, and it provides us with a viable remote learning
option if we ever need to temporarily shut the school
again,” Dodge added.
