The arms of BCIT’s Broadcast and Media Communications department have reached out to have a very positive impact in Africa!
North Vancouver nurse Marie Mackay spends half her year in British Columbia, and half in Kenya. A few years ago, Marie approached the Broadcast Department, along with other local radio stations, to see if any surplus radio equipment might be available to help create a new radio station under the auspices of Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology in the city of Kakamega, Kenya. The objective was compelling: HIV/AIDS is rampant in Africa, and there is a crying need for women to receive education and training that can help prevent the spread of these diseases, along with malaria, in this equatorial region. Radio is an ideal medium for disseminating important information and an international effort was launched to create a station to deliver the goods.
Then president Tony Knowles gave the go-ahead for a long term loan of audio equipment that was no longer in use and was being held in storage for “film prop” applications. A container full of equipment donated by local broadcast operators arrived in Nairobi, and the construction process began. When the station had secured its license, it went on the air, and today delivers on its promise as MMUST FM Radio, operating under the auspices of the School of Open Learning and Continuing Education (SOLACE). MMUST FM delivers its educational content to a diverse student population and training programs are in place to bring people who will provide content up to speed on radio operations.
Other partners such as the Commonwealth of Learning contribute to the success of the venture, which has become yet another example of BCIT’s impact on our increasingly smaller world.
Registration & Orientation
The registration and orientation will be in BCIT’s main gymnasium (building SE-16) at 09:00 on Tuesday, September 8th. Television students should look for “Gate E”.
You should also be able to print out your class schedule from the my.bcit.ca website, using the “student self service” option. There are a few last-minute timetable changes at this point, so we may give you a few corrections later.
Following your initial orientation at the Gym, you’ll head over to the Broadcast Department at 10:00 in TV Studio 1 where you will meet our faculty, followed by a student services expo in the Great Hall (building SE-2) at 11:00.
Week One Class Info
Week one is a special week when someof your regular classes will not have started due to the delays caused by labour day and orientation – We’ll have some special Broadcast TV classes for you on Thursday and Friday that won’t appear on your normal printed timetable. More details TBA on Tuesday.
BookKing System
You’ve all been given accounts on our BCIT BookKing system, which is used by students and faculty to reserve equipment for classes and projects. Your initial username and password have been emailed to your my.bcit.ca account. Right now your access is limited, however you should be able to login to your accounts once we explain everything. We’ll be talking more about this in a couple of weeks, so just hold onto this information for the time being.
I’ve spent a couple of days putting an photo book together for the first-year events from 2009. Have a look and see what you think (PDF download below).
I mostly did this just for myself as an experiment, however I think it turned out pretty well, and if there’s enough interest, I could put a group purchase together to get an actual printed version for anyone who wants one (about $50 for hardcover 8.5×11″, $15 for softcover 8×6″)
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What has been going on over the summer? New equipment and new instructors!
On the equipment side of things:
- We’re in the process of purchasing five new HD camera packages (we’re getting the Panasonic AG-HPX-300), which shoot on the P2 memory cards. This is hopefully spelling the beginning of the end of tape at BCIT. Of course these cameras will also come with all of the supporting hardware, new tripods, etc.
- We’ve also purchased 7 iMac computers. 6 for Final Cut Pro editing stations for news, and 1 for audio control 2 for playback into the News Magazine. We also purchased two 8-core Mac Pro systems for post-production on major projects (one for first year, and one for second year).
- In order to get more live-event production training, we’re getting a new Broadcast Pix portable production switcher package. The idea is that we can take this out to live events (sports, plays, non-profit, etc) so students can develop more live multi-camera production skills aside from our normal news programming
- The Facilis and Omneon server installation is progressing, and we will soon have network-accessible drives available for news and project editing. The Facilis is the “storage” server while working on your edits, while the Omneon is the “play-to-air” server that connects to the control rooms for direct digital playback (we’re phasing out tape).
All of this won’t be immediately available in September (heck, not much has actually been delivered yet). We understand students will want to play with use the new gear. Us too! But we also want to make sure everyone is properly trained in it.
What this will likely mean is “in-house” use for training purposes until we get all of the bugs/workflow resolved. Afterwards, we’ll get people using it ASAP. Some components will be rolled-out in September, some may not be available for groups or individuals to sign-out until January.
As far as instructional staff goes, Al Klein has decided to stay on as a full-time director with CityTV in Vancouver, therefore David Griffiths will be taking on the responsibilities of teaching first-year TV students with John Mills. Ashif Jivraj will be returning to BCIT Television as a full-time assistant instructor.
