Santa Clara, Calif. & Accra, Ghana-Thursday 23 July 2020 [ AETOS Wire ]
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.
Additional Resources:
- VIDEO: Learn more about how Charter College International High School is using Avaya Spaces to take their classrooms virtual.
- FACT SHEET: Avaya Spaces, a Cloud-Based Team Collaboration and Meeting Tool
About Avaya
Businesses
are built on the experiences they provide, and everyday millions of
those experiences are built by Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA). For
over one hundred years, we’ve enabled organizations around the globe to
win – by creating intelligent communications experiences for customers
and employees. Avaya builds open, converged and innovative solutions to
enhance and simplify communications and collaboration – in the cloud,
on-premise or a hybrid of both. To grow your business, we’re committed
to innovation, partnership, and a relentless focus on what’s next. We’re
the technology company you trust to help you deliver Experiences that
Matter. Visit us at http:www.avaya.com.
Contacts
Tom Paye
Avaya
+971 50 922 0642
tpaye@avaya.com
