By Neil Corbett – The Maple Ridge News
A Maple Ridge student will be carrying the flag at the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship competition in California.
Samuel Robertson Technical (SRT) Grade 11 student Anthony Wock’s test scores in PowerPoint made him tops in Canada.
The Maple Ridge company CCI Learning Solutions teaches the course, and will be sponsoring Wock’s trip to Anaheim, and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, on July 27-30 for the World Championships. There are cash prices of $5,000, $2,500 and $1,000 for first, second and third places, as well as medals and certificates.
It is a truly global competition, and last year’s champions came from the UK, Nepal, Macao, China, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. The 344,000 candidates competed in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, in both 2010 and 2007 versions.
Samuel Robertson Technical started offering a Microsoft Academy program on a trial basis last year, in partnership with CCI Learning Solutions.
“It offers them a better chance of getting a job after high school,” said SRT’s Brad Dingler, an IT teacher.
Wock has a black belt in the Korean martial art Taekwondo, and since his landmark certification, has gone to get a black belt in Power Point 2010.
He was the first student in B.C. to receive a Microsoft Office specialist certificate from a provincial high school in 2013.
This year he became the first high school student to win the national championship, and completed the 50-minute test in just 17 minutes, with a perfect score.
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