The What’s So Cool About Manufacturing (WSCM) student video contest is off and running! The Teacher Coach training was held yesterday (October 17th) at WQLN Studios where the teacher coaches from the 13 middle school teams received program specifics and a GoPro equipment kit for the project.
The goal of WSCM is to introduce 7th and 8th grade students to cool manufacturing careers. The Student Video Contest features images of today’s manufacturing environments and career choices through the eyes of middle school students by doing company research and creating company profile videos via a school team consisting of a teacher coach and 5-6 students. The competition culminates with a 3-day online voting period for school videos (Feb 26-28, 2018), judging for other award categories, and an Awards Gala on March 8, 2018.
Participating schools in Erie County include: Corry Area Middle School; Erie City: East/Wilson Middle Schools; Fairview Middle School; Ft LeBoeuf Middle School; Harbor Creek Junior High School; Iroquois Junior High School; JS Wilson Middle School; North East Middle School; RB Wiley Charter School; Saint Jude School; Walnut Creek Middle School; Wattsburg Area Middle School; Westlake Middle School. Each school is paired with a sponsoring manufacturer who will be the feature of their team’s video. The pairings were announced at the training session…and here they are….
In addition to the ‘featured manufacturer’ sponsors, the program in Erie County is supported by WQLN, Career Street, Merrill Lynch, Erie County Technical School, Marquette Savings Bank, Haines Printing, Lillis, McKibben, Bongiovanni & Co, NEFF, and McGill Power Bell. Production support is also provided by PBS39 Lehigh Valley in Bethlehem, PA, who was instrumental in the program development.
For the 2017-2018 school year, students in 36 of 67 counties across Pennsylvania – will participate in a WSCM video contest. The program was created by the Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC) in Allentown, PA five years ago as part of the Dream It Do It PA initiative. Last year, 123 middle school teams participated statewide, with more than 500,000 online votes were cast and 3,300 attended award ceremonies. Funds to develop the contests were provided in 2013 by a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development’s “Discovered in PA, Developed in PA” program for an MRC project called Lehigh Valley Skill-Up. This year the Northwest contest, as well as other pilot contests, are supported by a grant from Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).