Hear from our Marketing Intern, Dana Porter about going back to school for the day with Marketing & Communications Manager, Victoria Thomson by being involved in the BIMA Digital Day last month.
Since starting at Rokbak in July I have been involved in a variety of exciting projects, one of these being the BIMA Digital Day on the 10th November 2021. Going straight to the University of Strathclyde from High School and now on to Rokbak I was interested to get involved in this event and go back to school for the day to take part in the BIMA Digital Day, at Turnbull High School.
On the Day
The purpose of the day was to give 11 – 16-year-olds an insight into the world of digital careers and the opportunities available to them. The class we had the pleasure of assisting for the day was a Computing class. Victoria and I spent the morning presenting to the class about what digital means, what we do at Rokbak, how we use digital and the variety of career paths in the digital industry. Being involved in the digital marketing side of Rokbak and digital being a huge part of my daily life, I was hoping to inspire the students with their task but also get them thinking about digital careers!
This year, sponsored by WWF, the brief was focused on solving one of the world’s biggest challenges – tackling climate change. This was a topic very close to home for us, as based in Glasgow, COP26 was taking place right on our doorstep! So, I was very interested to see what ideas the students would come up with. The students were tasked to create a digital solution to raise awareness towards reducing the UK’s carbon footprint. The students split into small groups to solve the brief together. They spent time researching, brainstorming and designing their digital solutions throughout the day, before presenting their ideas in a Dragon’s Den style pitch to us, their teacher and the rest of the class.
All groups, with the exception of one out of the six groups, came up with the idea of a game to raise awareness of climate change. Although the majority of groups decided to use a game design as their basis, all groups had incredibly different and creative games. Only being a few years older than the students myself I was very surprised at how popular games had become among their age group! After all groups had pitched their solutions to the class, the judging panel, comprising of Mr MacKenzie (the class Computing teacher) Victoria and myself, had the difficult task of choosing a winning team.
After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion of selecting the winning group who proposed a game to raise awareness of climate change. Their game stood out as it was connected to real life activities to help prevent climate change. Their game displayed good practices which players were encouraged to do in real life in order to earn points by registering their environmentally friendly activity through the game. They even came up with characters, including polar bears, who as we all know are a species threated by climate change.
What did the students gain from the day?
All the students left the day feeling inspired and had more knowledge of the opportunities available to them in the digital world. One of the students provided some feedback:
“I really enjoyed the day and found it so interesting. I didn’t realise there were so many different jobs in gaming before taking part today.”
The students filled out questionnaires at the end of the day where most of them noted that they had learned a lot about the digital sector and many even said they were now interested in pursuing a career in digital. They were now also motivated to start a game design club at their school.
What did Rokbak gain from the day?
As Rokbak is so heavily invested in being part of the community it was great for us to get involved to see what future talent is out there and create possible partnerships. The ideas the students came up with and their enthusiasm was incredibly inspiring, and I felt really fortunate to have been able to spend the day with them. It was great to have conversations with them about future career prospects and the digital side of things which we all use in our daily lives.
As well as this, we gained a lot from the sustainability side of the task. As being responsible is part of our core values at Rokbak it was interesting to see the ideas of the younger generation and gain new insights from them which we can use in our journey to tackle climate change and building a better future.
It was also great to speak to the girls in the class to encourage them to continue to think about digital careers and help increase gender diversity in the sector, which is something we are continuously aiming to improve at Rokbak, particularly within our factory in Motherwell.
It was very inspiring being involved in such an important event with BIMA and Turnbull High School. I learned a lot from the students about new aspects in the digital world which I am excited to use in my own work to keep Rokbak up to date within the digital sector!