To store the vast amounts of creative material being produced daily, the School counts on the Nexis System, a broadcast level, proprietary server from industry leader Avid that stores the abundant amount of data being produced across Shawnigan by film arts, graphic arts, photography classes, yearbook and many other departments. According to Nigel Mayes, “The infrastructure and staff behind CASE have enabled us to add all the extra video communication, art and music to our SOUL program.” Shawnigan’s educational staff have achieved an admirable standard with online academic delivery, and the creative content has added an inspirational element.
Tools to enable these successes include Shawnigan’s fully Avid-equipped film production facility, with industry-level pro-editing stations; Atmos-equipped screening room and think-tank inspired teaching spaces; our 12-station digital photo lab and portrait photography studio; and our digital graphics lab with operating industry standard digital products. Students have access to the entire suite of Adobe tools both in class and on their own devices, and weekly tutorials have been very helpful in assisting students with their graphic creations. On the music production front, the School utilizes the industry-recognized standard ProTools Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) package from our partnership with The Bradley Family Foundation and Avid, which is also available to students to operate remotely on their home computers. Music students can complete full sound mixing projects in a distance-learning environment.
Nigel cites several student-led initiatives as some of the most powerful examples of CASE, including the genesis of the Robotics Lab, 3-D Printing, virtual design, iOS app development, rack server infrastructure design and, most recently, the ability to manipulate data captured by the School’s Observatory.
Last week, Carl Bradley arranged a meeting for staff and students with Brad Porter, Amazon’s Vice President and Distinguished Engineer for Robotics. This extraordinary opportunity to connect with a leading industry expert represents the CASE ethos: put the right elements into a collaborative environment, provide the support needed to explore where the conversation might lead, and watch the process evolve. Not every experiment works, but with student creativity fuelling the CASE furnace, we have discovered many fresh avenues to explore. Shawnigan young people have 21st century dreams and radically diverse future career paths that extend beyond traditional thinking, so CASE’s approach to creative, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary learning is an exceptional educational opportunity.
Thanks to Carl Bradley’s visionary outlook, the generosity of The Bradley Family Foundation, and support from a broad base of donors inspired by CASE programming, the possibilities for inspiration, creation and support are boundless. We will no doubt be reporting on continued, new and exciting outcomes “powered by CASE,” for many years to come.