Microsoft Word, Excel and Power point - these are all programs that some of us have learned to use in the workplace, while others learned about them in your high school IT classes. But a company called Sai Info- Tech offers a much more in depth training in these applications. They offer Microsoft office certification and 10 students sat the final practical exam today at the Radisson. The student with the highest score gets to represent Belize in the international competition in Orlando. We dropped by to find out how important such a certification is for the participants.
Dr. Kiran Vanjani, Director, Sai Info-Tech
"It is a matter of validating their skills everybody yes uses Microsoft programs on a daily basis but according to a survey, most of the users only use 10 percent of the features of the Microsoft office so we invest in buying the program but we don't use it to the full extent. The thing is the productivity is low, that is the result. So through this certification what is being achieved is that we know all the options correctly and we can do certain tasks in a given time frame so it is the practical exam students are taking right now is in Excel, last year we did it in PowerPoint, this year we did it in Excel."
"For this we provide them the online training as well on this learning platform called Jasperactive. So we provide those resources and then we also provide them with once a week class for 2 to 3 hour sessions every week for like about 2 months coming and then once a week they would come but it is online so even if they can't come like students who are out district once they only have to come to re-install the program then from there they do the practice on their own and we monitor from our end."
"To get the certification 70 percent is the passing score so all these students once they get 70 percent and above they are certified by Microsoft and they become Microsoft office specialists which is very much in demand and it is a global certification and whenever people are hiring they look for people, if you had to hire you would see there is a certified person versus a uncertified person so obviously your preference would be for the certified person because you know they already have a certain level of skills they have."
Any student between ages 13 to 21 can apply. This is the 2nd year Sai Info-tech is hosting the certification championship. As you heard, the 1st place winner get a free trip to Orlando for the international competition from July 29th to August 1st.
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