Driving safety for teens has become an important topic for Lenape Regional High School District.
The district’s TV station, Lenape District Television, the 24-hour educational access channel, has entered into its third year in the U Got Brains competition, hosted by the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey.
“One of the main reasons the we entered the U Got Brains Champion School Project three years ago was because the LRHSD already had the Stay Alive! Don’t Text and Drive campaign in place. We thought U Got Brains was a great way to get our message out to a larger audience,” said John Donaldson, director of television services at LDTV.
According to Jon Kinsella, spokesman for the BIANJ, BIANJ is the primary source of information, education, advocacy, support for people with brain injury and their families. The alliance serves more than 10,000 New Jersey residents each year.
“One of the leading causes of death and injury in teens is motor vehicle accidents. Three years ago we started U Got Brains,” said Kinsella.
According to the website, the competition is an opportunity for students and staff of New Jersey high schools to develop campaigns to address teen driving safety. Each school will develop its own project based on a topic the school chooses pertaining to teen driving safety. Projects can utilize social media, videos, blogs, traditional media or other means to help spread the message.
Schools enter their project ideas and are then awarded a $1,000 stipend to work on the campaign. LRHSD recently met the deadline and was awarded the stipend.
“The great thing about LRHSD is, they’ve been a participant all three years,” said Kinsella. “They won the grand prize in the first year of the competition.”
The grand prize winners receive a driving simulator for drivers’ education classes. Currently, the simulator is at Shawnee High School.
There are nine LDTV Option Two students developing the Heads Up, Eyes Forward! campaign.
“We are in the process of incorporating more students and advisors from each of the four LRHSD schools so the number of students will grow over the next couple of weeks,” said Donaldson. “We are meeting with Lenape’s Driver’s Education Club, we will also be meeting with Shawnee High School driver education and physical education teachers Janae Zechman and Amy Johnston at a separate meeting. We are still in the process of determining what group of students will be working with us from Cherokee and Seneca.”
This year, LDTV will be addressing texting and driving, an issue often addressed through TV and online campaigns by various major cell phone companies.
“We realized that texting while driving was only one of many types of distracted driving concerns that our campaign needed to address,” said Donaldson.
Last year, the second year of the competition, the team was one of five runners up and plan to improve its outreach to the audience.
“We learned that in order to make a significant impact we would need to attack the problem of distracted driving by doing a better job of marketing the Heads Up, Eyes Forward! campaign. This year, a large part of our campaign will make use of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to help spread our message to a larger audience,” said Donaldson.
An important detail about the competition to Kinsella is the peer-to-peer message.
“The cool thing about the champion schools program is we step away,” he said. “If the message is coming from a peer, it resonates louder.”
The winner of the competition is chosen by online votes.
“They [LRHSD] are only one of a few high schools still participating across the state. Their reach is remarkable,” said Kinsella. “They get the whole community involved in order to get the votes.”
According to Kinsella, the contest will culminate at the Champion Schools Program showcase and awards ceremony on June 7, at iPlay America, an indoor theme park. There, students from LRHSD, along with schools throughout the state will display and receive recognition for the teen driving safety campaigns.
“The top two campaigns, selected by a panel of judges, will be awarded a driving simulator donated by New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Company,” he said.
The midterm check up for the projects is slated for March.
To view LRHSD’s 2011–2012 project visit ugotbrains.com/cha mpion-schools-program/2012-participants/Lenape-Regional-HS-District/index.html, and to view the winning 2010–2011 project, visit ugotbrains.com/champion-schools-program/2011_winners.
