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Argyle students help design high tech hearts

A group of North Vancouver elementary and high school students have teamed up to create digital media visuals for a Kindness Project.
DMA

A group of North Vancouver elementary and high school students have teamed up to create digital media visuals for a Kindness Project.

Grade 11 and 12 students from Argyle Secondary’s digital media academy are mentoring Boundary Elementary kids in a foursession program to make visuals through posters, T-shirts and graphic
design imagery.

Digital media academy teacher Murray Bulger said the project is a chance for the older students to give back to the community by mentoring their younger peers.

“You can see them taking on that sort of like a big brother, big sister kind of role and feeling kind of proud of what they already know and being able to pass it along,” Bulger said.

He said the older students help kids get around some of the technical challenges to the project, such as using the advanced software.

Isabella Flaim, a Grade 11 digital academy student, said she volunteered to participate in the partnership program to familiarize the younger students with digital media software.

“(I learned) to take it in steps and take it slowly, so they understand how to work the tools better, so they can memorize it better and keep the knowledge for later,” Flaim said.

Teachers from both schools worked to get the program running and Regina Vosahlo, a teacher leader at the Argyle Family of Schools, said they are hearing a very enthusiastic response from the elementary students.

“They said that they very much enjoyed learning about the new technology… (and) that working together has expanded their perspective as well,” Vosahlo said. “They loved coming.”

Digital media academy assistant Jennifer Vandermye, the organizer of the project, said it lets elementary students know about the options available for them in the future as well as familiarizes them with the school.

“It’s giving them the self-confidence and I think that it’s really making them aware of the opportunities that they have when reach high school,” Vandermye said. “Having that contact with the digital media students themselves kind of breaks the ice too.”

Argyle’s digital media academy is a specialty program for grade 11 and 12 students interested in animation, visual effects and web design. Ashley Mina, another Grade 11 student in the program, said she had always wanted to work in digital media.

“I decided to go to the DMA program because it was always a life-long dream of mine to get into the industry and so I figured maybe this would open up a door for me where as a normal class might not,” Mina said.