Home Business Vera Court updates computer lab with Ascendium’s help

Vera Court updates computer lab with Ascendium’s help

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Vera Court updates computer lab with Ascendium’s help
Vera Court Neighborhood Center’s updated computer lab. Photo by Niki Presser

by Jennifer Smith
Ascendium Education Group

Vera Court Neighborhood Center has been providing academic support to children on Madison’s Northside through mentoring, tutoring and after-school programming since 1994. A little over a year ago, employees at Ascendium Education Group’s Madison office selected Vera Court as their adopted nonprofit, and since then they have had many opportunities to help the center, from donating supplies to using paid volunteer hours to help out in person. 

Ascendium donated 40 decommissioned computers to Vera Court. Twenty-three of them, along with three projectors, went to their main facility on the Northside for a computer lab used in literacy programming and for staff computers. The remaining 17 went to two centers operated by Vera Court on the south side: Bridge-Lakepoint-Waunona Neighborhood Center and Latino Academy of Workforce Development.

“Our center is all about making learning fun and engaging,” said Vera Court Development Associate Niki Munz. “The kids here primarily use Raz-Kids, which hosts over 400 e-books for K-5 students. The improvement in the kids’ reading and comprehension when they use this is remarkable.”

Ascendium volunteers upgraded the hardware and installed new system software on all of the computers, and Vera Court worked with DaneNet to set up the lab. The new computers arrived just in time as the old computers were slowing down and occasionally shut down during use.

“When the computer shuts down, it shuts down learning and the kids disengage,” Niki explained. “Sometimes they don’t come back to the computer at all that day. I don’t think people understand just how important this technology is for learning. I believe all children deserve access to tools for success, and that’s the gift Ascendium gave us.”