Tell us a bit about you, your school and internship program
Hi! My name is Maribeth Tabanera and I am the Learning Through Internship Coordinator (LTIC) at Seven Oaks Met School and Maples Met School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This is my second year serving the LTIC at both schools, previously I taught industrial arts at Maples Collegiate also in the Seven Oaks School Division. On Tuesday and Thursday, students participate in unique real-world experiences, in workplaces that relate to their fluid career goals. These internship days allow students to hone their pre-employment skills like resume development and interview techniques and then help them explore a variety of interests by working alongside real-world mentors.
How do you use ImBlaze to support your program?
ImBlaze has been a great support to our program, by allowing us to keep track of our relationships with the organizations in our community. When we first opened, we had 45 learners. Advisors kept track of their student’s internship using digital spreadsheets. Ten years later, we have 270 learners at Maples Met School and Seven Oaks Met School. ImBlaze is a powerful support in data keeping, organizational protocols, and student tracking.
How has ImBlaze impacted how you support getting students out into real-world learning experiences?
ImBlaze has impacted how I support getting students out into real-world learning experiences by streamlining our internship process. Students and staff use the database to research organizations that have a history with us. For example, users can find out if a student had an amazing internship experience in the past at a site. Winnipeg is a medium-size city with a population of just over 770,000 people. With 250 students all looking for internships, we were bound to have multiple students interested in the same organizations. It is integral for us to maintain positive relationships with our community members. Having the ability to control what number of students can pursue a site has ensured we don’t bombard and confuse them with requests. ImBlaze is also a powerful tool in record keeping. We keep track of students' attendance and we also upload compliance documents to the database. ImBlaze has been a great addition to our program because it helps keep us organized and creates a visual history of our internship partnerships in easy to navigate website and application.
Tell us an example of an amazing internship at your school. Do you have a student who might want to share her/his internship story?
Patrick is currently a grade 12 student at the Seven Oaks Met School. Patrick recollects and reflects on his time at the University of Manitoba Radio Station, UMFM during the 2017-2018 school year.
Where was/were your LTI(s) this year? My internship this year was at the University of Manitoba Radio Station, UMFM.
How did you grow? Ever since I set foot in the radio station, I’ve been constantly learning and gaining experience in audio production. To be honest, UMFM wasn’t my first choice since I wanted to go to have an internship at a radio station. But I quickly grew to love every moment, lesson, and experience at the radio station. Starting out, I knew nothing of audio production and had very little experience in it. But throughout the two years, I interned in UMFM I’ve grown to become someone who is skilled in the field of audio production. I started out by picking songs for advertisements, then they quickly got me into making podcasts, that’s when I started to learn and practice the basics of audio production. I learned how to record audio, work the soundboard, and edit/master audio. The first few podcasts were, as expected, horrible, but with each podcast, I was given constructive criticism/feedback. And over time my podcasts started more and more professional. I spent the rest of my first year learning from the constructive criticism and practicing the basics of audio production. My podcasts, near the end of the first year, were of amazing quality. My mentors decided to put me on the next level, and they entrusted me with editing advertisements for them. And so I picked songs and they taught me how to properly merge vocals with music. I did that for a while, and like the podcasts, the work I put out became progressively better. Eventually, my mentors decided to put me another level higher. This time they entrusted me with fully producing ads. Recording, editing, and mastering. Everything I learned at the station had come full circle. I applied my experiences in producing podcasts to editing advertisements, and the next thing I knew, I was making fully produced advertisements. And again, like the podcasts, I had become progressively better with time, practice, and constant constructive criticism. Halfway through the year, I was producing great quality ads at a steady pace. My mentors eventually developed enough trust in me to work with the people who come into record advertisements, they put me on the mentorship team that taught university students about audio production, and near the end of the year, they entrusted me with a majority of their ads. And I spent the rest of the year gaining experiences in working with other people in audio production and honing the skills I gained at the station.
I’ve grown so much since my first day at the station, the internship was “plentiful,” I gained a lot of experiences and developed skills in audio production.
