PSA+from+Start+to+Finish

PSA from Start to Finish

I was very excited to create a Public Service Announcement for this course. As week three began I was a little skeptical on how this group project would turn out. The most frustrating part was finding a group of 3-5 people in my cohort. The frustration diminished when everyone started posting their cohort and section numbers on the discussion board. I tried to brainstorm how this process could have been easier and the only answer I came up with is if the IA would have assigned groups from their experience. This would have guaranteed group members collaboration earlier and all members have a group before the start of week 3.

When we formed our group, the first contact we had was by email. Our group consisted of 5 people from different parts of the state and levels of technology skills that varied from low to high. After our initial contact, we decided to work in Google Docs to collaborate by using the share and chat feature. A few members of the group did not have knowledge of how to use either one of these features. After a brief training, we were all on the same page the collaboration began.

When our group started to work on our script and narration, we did not have a common goal. We brainstormed by each writing down a few ideas that we were interested in. As a group, we voted on what topic interested us the most and decided on Cyber bullying. Our group started writing the script and narration for our PSA. At first we all had different ideas of what should be in the PSA. As we were writing, we commented and added each of our thoughts in the script. We worked very well together during this phase and came up with a good objective and direction for the PSA. Our thought process all took us to the hallways and classrooms of a school. We wanted to add both close-up and distant shots. We felt that students would be the best subjects to work with because other students would relate better to their peers. We also knew we wanted to make sure an adult was in the shot that talked about how to prevent cyber bullying and what to do if you became a victim. It was a lot of fun talking about the scenes and making them come alive.

The next week, we decided on what roles each of us would accomplish based on the skill and comfort level each o f us excelled in. The video scenes were shot using our scene list we compiled. After the scenes were shot we recorded the narration from our script and both were sent to our editing team. Our editing team worked diligently to add the narration to the scene list and edit the video to be 60 minutes or less. After the first video was created, it was posted on YouTube and then viewed by all group members. We picked YouTube based on how easy it was to upload a video and also how easy it would be to take the code and embed it into our Wiki and Blogs. Once again, we gave our input of changes that needed to be made and sent them back to the editors. The editors made their second changes and then the video was reposted and viewed a second time by the team. After the second posting, the team reviewed the video and decided to accept all the changes that were made. Our PSA was accepted and finalized by all members with positive feedback.

After the final edits, we had one more decision to make. What type of creative commons attribution would be need to put on our video? As a group we researched the different types of creative commons that were available. We decided since it was a PSA that anyone would have the opportunity to use it when they were using it in an educational manner for student cyber bullying awareness. We also allowed individuals to take the video without permission and use it in their curriculum as an educational tool.

All I can say is that our team rocked. Our team consisted of 5 members who all worked hard during every aspect of the project. If I had to do it all over again, I would want to have the same five people in my group.