---

Another awesome service project for Comcast Cares Day!

View fullsize

Wow!! We had such an awesome time with all of the wonderful Comcast NBCUniversal volunteers, their families, our students, and crew.

This year, we organized a beautification and upgrade project at The Conservatory Mansion located in downtown Trenton, NJ. It's the original historic Trenton Conservatory of Music founded in 1920 by Julliard professor William O'Toole and now serves as a venue for youth and families to learn music, arts, media, and more.

It's also the Mercer County location for Beyond Expectations where we provide youth with marketable life skills through media education and service leadership.

In addition to creating a lovely new landscape design to improve the curb appeal, volunteers painted each of the artist studios, built brand new computer desks from scratch ... and installed them in our Media Room!

View fullsize

Ja'Reek Wiliams interviews Conservatory Mansion co-owner Sterick Ivey with Robert McGill on camera and Marquez Ellison on boom

A few of our phenomenal students volunteered on projects and served as Event Correspondents interviewing participants, taking photos, and capturing footage from the day.

How wonderful for us to witness for another year community, families, and local organizations working side by side to make change happen.

---

BE wraps up with another group of awesome students  

View fullsize

We wrapped our Spring 2015 series with awesome students that joined our Television Studio Production classes and Speedcrewing Workshops. They range in age from 10 - 18 years old enabling opportunities for the older students to gain peer leadership experience.

We jumped right in with basic media terminology -- assigning different studio crew assignments from producer to floor manager to enhance their communication skills and begin to understand the importance of collaboration.

It's always amazing when we start to uncover the wealth of hidden talents in young people. We can already see the makings of success on the horizon in this class, too!

---

It's National Volunteer Week!

We're giving thanks this week (and throughout the year) for our amazingly dedicated volunteers.

---

An awesome afternoon of CODING!

Thanks to John Kuiphoff, The College of New Jersey Chair of Interactive Media, for leading our students in an awesome afternoon of programming, coding, and fun! In addition to learning the basics of code, they were introduced to some of the trends in the digital media space including an exploration of  Virtual Reality.

The students wrapped the day with Michael Smith, KidzBeatz Audio Engineer, in a recording studio learning about Audio Production ... and even created their own original track.

And of course, a couple of students were able to lend a hand with our crew capturing footage from the day...

---