PSAs - Public Service Announcements
A public service announcement (PSA) or public service ad, are messages in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge, with the objective of raising awareness, changing public attitudes and behavior towards a social issue. In the U.K, they are generally called public information films (PIFs); in Hong Kong, they are known as announcements in the public interest (APIs). From Wikipedia.
Creating PSAs, or Public Service Announcements, is an excellent way to integrate many disciplines, content standards, skills and literacies. These are real-world issues which will motivate students in a number of ways. First of all, they are real-world and relevant. Second, they involve the use of multimedia technologies. They allow for maximum student voice and choice. They provide a real-world audience for students' research and the resulting products students created.
In a previous article, Filmmaking - the ultimate project-based learning, I recommended many ways students can utilize the process of filmmaking and videography as vehicles for the curriculum. PSAs are one of those formats.
On this page you will find examples of student-produced PSAs.
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This video, There's a Pill for That, is one example of a student-produced video.
The students in this case really wanted to do a project on this topic, but the teacher was hesitant. However, as you can see, the students had to do quite a lot of research on the topic and then had to learn/develop many skills related to the actual production of the video. Additionally, they had to utilize and develop skills such as creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, accessing and analyzing information. They also developed literacies such as creativity and the arts, health, media literacy, financial literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, aural literacy . . . Which disciplines, which content standards and which of the CCSS standards were learned/mastered in the process of researching, then creating, this video? |
