Spread the word to stop the word.

Recently in one of my classes I heard multiple people use the word retarded.  I'm sure many people use the word retarded loosely and don't think much about it and when I hear it I usually don't think twice about it.  However, I started thinking about how the word came to be considered bad and if people really should use it or not and that is what I want to reflect on this week.

I thought about how this word relates to my passion project and how if I'm spreading autism awareness I also need to think about words that can be hurtful towards anyone with mental disability.  Retarded discriminates against people with mental illness in the same way that Nigger discriminates against black people and Fag against gays.  The problem is, retarded has become a word that people use jokingly with their friends unlike other derogatory words that can cause fights if used in the wrong place.  I went online and found an article called "Noah's Dad" and I really liked the points that the writer had.  I learned that there is a campaign called "Spread the word to stop the word" and he even had a link to a PSA posted on his website that I thought was intersting and had a strong message behind it.  I am going to link the website below for anyone who wants to hear about his story and why he stopped using the R-word.  I am going to make an effort to tell people not to use the R-word when I hear it and you should too.

Link to article:
http://noahsdad.com/spread-the-word-to-end-the-word/

PSA completed

This past week my group has finished editing and making our psa video and I really like how it turned out.  After making it last week we thought that it looked good and we really liked the product but after showing our psa to the class and getting their feedback, we realized it needed a lot of improvement.  I went home the next day and worked on it a lot and sent it to Jamie who edited the video some more and added the music to it and Taylor improved our website even more.  What I really like about my group is that we have our own website as a call to action for our psa.  After people view our psa they can go to the link at the end of our video and read some of the things that Taylor has out there on the website.  I feel like I learned a lot during the process of creating a psa.  The biggest thing I learned is how to have a strong impact on the viewer in a small amount of time through the music and fonts that you use.  Every little detail counts as something that will benefit your psa.  The music and how fast we were able to complete our psa went really well.  It helps when everyone pitches in and finds their own part to work on.  However, if I could do this assignment over I would have done something that involved filming because I think some of my other classmates that have actors in their psa, have a more professional look to their video.

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