January 2018

dock10 gives students a hands-on studio experience to promote STEM subjects

The STEM subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths are often in the news, as encouraging more young people to take them up is considered to be vital for the UK's future productivity. At dock10, we appreciate the importance of these subjects to our own tech driven industry and so we have become actively involved with the STEM Ambassador programme at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester. Volunteers from across the business take part in activities designed to promote STEM subjects and careers, inspiring young people, especially school students, by sharing our knowledge, experience and enthusiasm.

Recently, we attended a STEM event at MOSI called Digital Celebration. This event aimed to promote the digital sector to students in years 9-10 (aged around 13-14) from a number of local schools. Brainstorming the best ways to engage with the youngsters, our technology team came up with the idea of building a mini studio at the event that would offer students a hands-on demonstration of the digital skills used by our industry. We designed a green screen mini studio to let students actively take on a variety of TV studio roles including Autocue, Vision Mixer, Unreal Background, Sound Supervisor, Cameras, VT Play in PC and Presenter.

On the day, the green screen studio attracted a lot of attention and we saw a total of nine schools with at least ten pupils taking part from each. Guided by our technical experts, they undertook the various roles while making a short, pre-scripted video in front of a green screen. The students absolutely loved it, and it helped to inspire them about the local digital sector while highlighting the important digital skills needed in our industry. We answered questions and provided information about possible routes into particular areas of work, as well as supporting the teachers by helping them to better understand Manchester's digital landscape.

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