3D and School Safety

Think for a second about the community you live in. On any given work day, twenty percent of your community is involved in a K-12 environment. And if you add higher education to this count, the total number of community members actively involved in school locations exceeds twenty-five percent. That not only represents a huge footprint for public safety agencies, but a potential security “blind spot” if schools cannot communicate with them during emergencies.

As a result, SchoolSAFE recently announced the launch of a national 3D television campaign during National Safe Schools Week, October 16-22, 2011. SchoolSAFE has selected School Safety Partners to produce the 3D campaign with input from major 3D technology companies and school districts. The campaign will use live-action stereoscopic scenes and stereoscopic 3D animation, and will be delivered to general audiences, school staff, and students using all available platforms. The campaign will show how schools today must plan for a broad range of incidents and emergencies including: an active shooter, animal threats, bomb threats, a bus accident, chemical spills, earthquakes, fire, floods, food contamination, gas odor, intruders, pandemic outbreak, power outages, tornadoes, and severe winter storms.

SchoolSAFE’s plans offer some interesting content implications. “3D television channels are going to be hungry for product and sponsorship. Since the purpose of a TV channel is to use programing to gather a large audience and deliver it to the advertiser, the advertiser's message has to stand out. If channels are producing eye-popping 3D content, 2D advertiser messages are going to fall flat.” School Safety’s John Simmons predicts the emergence of more and more high-quality 3D advertising to fit in and keep stride with the new 3D content. "If our responsibility is to raise awareness in the community and try to influence public opinion about school safety, then our PSAs should be in 3D as well," Simmons says.

School Safety Partners then plans to create an interesting new mashup. It aims to leverage the impact of 3D with the power of interoperable two-way radio to create a pulsing, semi-live training simulation for school emergency preparedness. It’s interesting to note that the vision and impetus behind this effort comes from Colorado State Senator Steve King, who has a strong record in school safety legislation. 

Revisit our FutureTalk 3D blog next week to learn more details about this hallmark effort.