The SPSA Reflection serves to reflect on the SPSA video and the process of developing our sustainability solution into a public service announcement. Through this reflection, I recall what it was like to prepare, brainstorm and research for sustainable indoor urban farming, and how this was impacted within a group setting.
My group’s SPSA video was on the topic of sustainable urban farming and through lots of research, organization and discussion, we were able to create an informative video on sustainable urban farming, specifically the use of hydroponics in NYC. The preparation included exposing ourselves to a wide set of literature and research to understand the benefits and potential drawbacks of the proposed sustainability solution. Through knowing the benefits and drawbacks of a specific solution, we were able to form a larger and holistic view of the sustainability solution to express its effectiveness and reliability in the real world. My group assigned individual tasks by first reviewing the project guidelines together as a group, to ensure no one feels lost and then based on each person’s interest and skill set, they were assigned specific sub topics of sustainable urban farming. For example, Lizbeth was interested in the nonprofit sector so she worked on researching organizations in NYC that promote hydroponic farming, meanwhile I was interested in the background of hydroponics and its reliability as a climate change solution which is why I worked on the problem/solution slides. Additionally, I worked on script writing since I had previous experience drafting and editing papers. My tasks also included working and shortening the duration and length of long clips to make it run smoothly in front of a larger audience. New concepts that were learned include how sustainable urban farming can be presented in numerous ways whether it be through hydroponics or through vertical farming and they aim to give cities the opportunity to grow agriculture with less land space, while combating food deserts. A public service announcement is the best genre to promote public awareness compared to an essay because essays can present difficulties for people due to intense vocabulary/scientific jargon and essays can tend to be harder and more complex to understand. However, a public service announcement presents public concerns in easy to understand format since they are visual depictions of information, being accessible to a wider audience, and they follow a pitch format, which engages the viewer throughout the entire announcement. The most favorable part of working in a group was being able to hear my peers’ ideas and fresh perspectives about designing the video because it gave me the chance to explore new methods of displaying media. The least favorite aspect was deciding roles and separating tasks, because when one group member was delayed by particular situations, then it could often set the whole team back. Improvements to future SPSA projects include allowing students to have more in-class time to work on their presentations and to go through an in-class tutorial of how to use specific video-editing platforms such as Canva. Additionally, different SPSA sustainability groups can present their work to each other to make feedback for the other group to learn upon.
