320 places filled in Web-Elevate

By Andrew Donovan

320 places have been filled this April in the new web-elevate programme run by Digital Skills Academy in the Digital Hub.

It is a one year level eight course divided into three semesters. Candidates choose to specialise in either computer coding, project management or marketing, and all three streams work together on designing web-sites, apps, e-learning portals etc.

Stephen Stewart (43) is in his final semester of project management and he says “its a wonderful thing seeing a project come together,  working in a team was a new dimension for me … you can sit in college all your life but this is real world experience.”

Large companies such as BT Ireland, Digiweb and Oracle Ireland delegate live projects to students and give them quasi-employment status to develop digital projects for the company.

Richard McDonald (37)  graduated as a chartered accountant and was working as a professional  sales manager in the construction sector until the truck hit the wall in November 2010.

He describes his participation in the programme as a complete upskill.

Enda Kenny called Richard “a pioneer of re-training”, at a recent expo at The Digital Hub.

Richard is two months away from bringing his course project to market ‘Allequine.com’.

The project is a video-sharing web site and social network about all things horse-related.

Richard applied for about a dozen courses through the springboard programme but he felt that webelevate was the most attractive because specific computer skills were not a requirement.

“It applies a digital layer to established business skills. There was a can-do attitude from day one and the opportunites provided are absolutely endless. What you get out of it is only limited to your imagination and what products you want to bring to market.”