PSA

=Phase 2: The Public Service Announcement= During this phase of the health unit will research their health topic and create a public service announcement to educate the community.

"Data analysis and visualization are at the center of most interdisciplinary projects because social problems and questions frequently grow out of data collection activities. This is especially true of health issues." — Tom Walters.

Purpose of Phase 2
The purpose of this phase of the Health Unit is the following:
 * Do an in depth study of the health issue they have selected
 * Introduce students to the idea of Public Service Announcements
 * Learn important media creation skills and about the PSA production process
 * Collaboratively build a rubric for the PSA
 * Produce a Public Service Announcement

Teaching Considerations
The sequence of these activities is important. Each homeroom should move through them at the same time, in the same order.

The biggest decision teachers have to make is what format will the PSA's take? They can be photo stories with narration (like the Story of Me in 5 Pictures project). It could be a collaboration with WNED or CEPA. If we had access to camcorders we might be able to do regular video based PSAs (but I'm not sure what we have for video editing software on the laptops). Regardless, we need to analyze what our resources are and decide on the best format for the PSAs.

Also, how will you group students for creating PSAs? Will students work in small groups (as suggested in the choosing a topic section), or individually, or as a whole homeroom? This will depend partly on what you know about your students and what you select as the format for your PSAs (ie what equipment is available, etc.).

Total Time Frame:
22-33 Project Blocks

Teacher Checklist:
[|Phase 2 Teacher Checklist]

Part 1 - Introduction to Public Service Announcements

 * Time Frame: 2 Project Blocks
 * Activity Information

Part 2 - Building a Rubric
What makes for Quality Work? How will the PSAs be evaluated
 * Time Frame: 2 Project Block
 * Activity Information

Part 3 - Researching the Health Topics
What is known about your topic? What should the community know?
 * Time Frame: 3-5 Project Blocks
 * Activity Information

Part 4 - Preproduction
Finding a message, storyboarding the PSA, selecting the medium, gathering production resources
 * Time Frame: 10-15 Project Block
 * Activity Information

Part 5 - Producing Public Service Announcements
Pulling media together into the "rough-cut" of the PSA
 * Time Frame: 3-5 Project Block
 * Activity Information

Part 6 - Polishing PSAs - STILL IN DRAFT
Revising and editing the PSA (improving the quality), adding transitions, background sound, voice overs, being peer reviewed.
 * Time Frame: 2-4 Project Block
 * Activity Information

Teacher Resources

 * Project-based Learning [|Teaching Strategies & Technical Help]
 * The [|New York State Department of Health] has tons of information and data available online (see Site Contents on the right).
 * There is local data from the [|Erie County Department of Health]. See the [|Health Information] tab.