Several years ago, the Journal of Media Literacy Education published my article The Role of Collaboration and Feedback in Advancing Student Learning in Media Literacy and Video Production. In this piece, I discuss examples of public service announcements for safe driving initiatives. Safe driving is certainly one of the most common topics of PSA campaigns for high schools since this issue is one of the most directly impactful for American teens. This fall, my students produced pieces for the Just Drive campaign sponsored by the Impact Teen Drivers program.
For this project, students examine approaches to the creation of advertisements and other forms of promotional messaging, along with informational segments for a variety of media. They develop and pitch their own concepts in pre-production workshops and then devise approaches to produce their pieces.
For this particular initiative, a strong range of messages were created. One project was created by a two-person team; theirs, titled Just a Second, turned out to be an award-winning piece. Another group of three students worked together by each writing and directing their own piece while crewing or acting in each others’ projects. Yet another PSA was crafted by a student working alone, and he created a piece that hinged on a single visual idea designed for stark impact. Check out these others here: Cut Short, Lucky, and Don’t.
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