PSA Reflection

Our group worked well together throughout this PSA project. Early in week 2, we formed our group (Rachel Lewis, Diane Shubert, Kimberly Irwin, and myself), and I came up with the topic for our project. The other group members expressed an interest in my topic choice, and Kimberly got to work on the script and narration. Based on her ideas, I began working on a draft of the shot list, and Rachel and Diane decided which clips they wanted to film. Kimberly found the statistics for our narration, and I found pictures of wrecks caused by texting. I also created the credits and works cited page with imovie. Two of my other responsibilities included acting as director and coordinator of online meetings. As director, I completed most of the pre-production PSA document. After Rachel, Kimberly, and I sent our video clips and pictures to Diane, she used Pinnacle to edit the clips together and add narration. During week 4, Diane sent out several versions of the video through email, and Rachel and I chatted with her about improvements such as adding background music and revising certain clips. At the end of week 4, I uploaded the final version to YouTube, and the four of us worked together to finish the revisions on the Pre-Production PSA assignment.

We used my wiki to post pictures of wrecks and statistics about texting and driving. I also recorded and posted transcripts of our online meetings through Windows Live Messenger. Another method of collaboration included using Google Docs to share ideas and keep everyone advised of our progress. We also sent out numerous group emails using Gmail which has an excellent system of organization for group projects.

Please click here to view our Google Document showing some of our collaboration.

To improve our PSA, we could have done a better job of blending the background music with the narration using the Audacity program. Also one section of the narration (6,500 accidents) seemed like it was spoken too fast, but we had a lot to say in a small amount of time. Overall, we are very pleased with the final result. I think our product is persuasive, realistic, and we worked together efficiently as a group. Each member was cooperative, helpful, and used her strengths to benefit the whole.

** This is an example of the Creative Commons license we chose to protect our work:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License

** Listed below are the websites I found for pictures of wrecks caused by texting:

"Driving and using cell phone?" SodaHead. June 23, 2009 < http://www.sodahead.
com/question/156486/driving-and-using-cell-phones/?link=ibaf>.

Monty, Chris (2009). "Texting while driving? Big Deal." Blippit. May 22nd 2009.
June 23, 2009 .

"Texting and driving." Truckin Road Trips. June 23, 2009 trips.com/texting_and_driving.htm>.

** This is the website where Kimberly found our statistical information about texting and driving:

"Texting while driving is taking a toll." Find Law. June 10, 2009. June 25, 2009
.