Although scientists study hazardous events to try to better educate people and forecast when and where a hazardous event is likely to happen, we all have some responsibility in keeping ourselves and families safe. Individual preparedness is becoming increasingly important because the government may or may not be able to “save us’.
Dates: April 15 – April 22
All assignments are due by April 22 at 11:59 PM
Estimated Time to Complete: About 15 hours total over 1.5 weeks
- Instruction — 3 to 4 hours for the FEMA course, including the worksheets
- Assignments — ~ 8 to 10 hours to complete individual preparedness tasks and make your presentation. 2 to 3 hours to assess your own community’s preparedness plans.
Learning Goals:
- Learn how to access FEMA training modules
- Critically evaluate your own situation and act to make improvements
- Demonstrate to others how to improve preparedness using your own situation as an example
- Analyze and make one recommendation for improving community preparedness aimed at the community you live in
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Assignment # 1 – Instruction:
1) Navigate to the FEMA website and read the course materials for IS-22, units 1, 2, and 5.
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Assignment # 2 – Assess your own preparedness writing assignment – Canvas (50 points)
1) Write a basic assessment of your pre-course state of preparedness. Make a word document ( 3-5 pages, 1.5 spaced, 12 point font) that describes the following, and upload to Cnvas:
a. What is your family emergency communication plan? (If you don’t have one, be honest and fess up! It’s a legitimate answer for this question).
b. Do you have emergency supplies stored? If so, describe what you have briefly.
c. What are two potential hazards you identified that can affect your community?
d. Have you made any preparations to deal with those hazards? If so, describe them briefly.
e. Identify one “hole” in your pre-course preparedness and describe it. For example, I have heavy dishes stored on the top, open shelf in the kitchen = earthquake hazard!
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Assignment # 3 – Make a Preparedness Improvement and post to discussion board – WordPress site (25 points)
1) Make at least 1 improvement according to the IS-22 recommendations. You don’t have to spend money on this part (unless you want to). Your improvement can be as simple as making a communication plan, or using supplies you already have to make your home more safe).
2) Describe your pre-improvement and post-improvement state of preparedness and post to the blogs. Make a presentation that illustrates what you did, choosing one of the following ways to show your work:
a. Post a written blog that includes photos that show your preparedness assessment. If you choose to post photos, be sure to make them anonymous (ie avoid showing your home address or photos of people)
b. Make a video, comic book or other presentation using one of the tools on the Tools/Resources page. (Note – if you don’t want to show photos, making a comic illustration is a great way to stay anonymous, but still illustrate what you did)
c. Upload your presentation to the Blogs for other students to review.
d. Review the other student preparedness projects.
e. Identify the presentation you learned most from and compare your preparedness with theirs by making a comment on their post praising their work.
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Assignment # 4 – Assess preparedness in your own community – WordPress site
1) Community preparedness: Search online for the disaster preparedness or emergency preparedness information for your city, town or county/borough. Note – most of us are in Fairbanks so, to mix it up a little, if you were born or grew up somewhere else, you can use that place for your assignment.
- Read the information on the website or document you found for your community.
- Then, post a second blog post that describes the following:
a. Was it easy or difficult to find your community’s plan? Describe how long it took, or in the extreme case, that you never actually found it online.
b. Describe one thing you think shows your community is well-prepared in case of a disaster
c. Describe one way you think an improvement could be made to your community’s plan.
d. Answer the following question: Do you feel better or worse about how well your community is prepared after reading it’s plan?
e. Read through all the other student’s posts and comment on the one that you think shows the best prepared community of all.