Nicola Armstrong from Portadown is celebrating today after winning the prestigious learndirect Outstanding Learner Award, which recognises learners who overcome difficulties to succeed in their learning.
Having irreparably damaged a friend’s PC, Nicola, 42, felt the time had come to tackle her fear of computing and enrolled on an eight week introductory IT course at Southern Regional College’s Learning Shop in Portadown.
Nicola says about her initial computing experiences, “I was totally hopeless, until I started learning computing at The Learning Shop, I was breaking everything I touched!”
With encouragement from centre staff and a great deal of self-determination she overcame her fear of computing and successfully completed her course. With a new sense of confidence she progressed, achieving the ECDL qualification in March 08, and, having passed her OCR level 2 Word Processing is currently working towards level 3.
Nicola now has experience, computing qualifications, as well as her own laptop and broadband connection at home!
Andrew Cromwell, Centre Manager of The Learning Shop stated that he “nominated Nicola for this award given her hard work and clear determination to succeed. Through gaining her IT qualifications, Nicola shows the way for others to follow!”
BBC Northern Ireland Presenter, Donna Traynor hosted the Northern Ireland learndirect Achievement Award Ceremony and says, “Nicola truly is an outstanding learner and is an inspiration to us all. It was a humbling experience to hear the stories of individuals who have overcome personal difficulties in order to improve their future. Nicola’s story is very inspiring and I’m a great advocate in continuously improving yourself through education. I wish Nicola the best of luck in the future”.