Henry+Final+Reflection

As my internship for this semester comes to a close, I must say that I am pleased with what I have accomplished. My goal was to create a social media marketing campaign for ETV Radio. I planned on doing this by using Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, iTunes, and YouTube. From the start, I knew my goal was rather ambitious, however I never doubted myself. Although not all of my ideas came to fruition, I do not see them as failures. Luckily, I am fortunate to be employed at ETV so I can continue working on my objectives.

As I stated in the first paragraph the goal of my internship was to //create// a social media marketing campaign for ETV Radio, and I did this. I established a presence for ETV on the web in areas that had been non-existent before. The main goal for my project was to create a Facebook page for ETV Radio, while I was not able to get a separate Facebook page for radio, I think my brought attention to the subject and therefore made the Communications Department write more radio related posts.

Another part of my plan was to create a Twitter account for ETV Radio. Although we had to jump through a couple of hoops initially, this turned out to be the most successful part of the campaign. It gave ETV radio’s voice another outlet. As of right now we 43 followers, I hope that number will continue to grow. I also hope that I can begin having more of a variety of what I Tweet about.

I thought the part of the campaign involving Second Life was the most ambitious, but it turns out that was one of the easiest parts of the project. While the show we wanted to host in Second Life hasn’t happened yet, each time we tried, I learned a little more. If there aren’t any more unexpected surprises we should have the show a week from Wednesday. I hope this is something that is successfully initiated, so that I can say that I was a pioneer implementing a new interactive element to our call-in shows.

Creating a YouTube channel for ETV Radio was another component of the project. Throughout the course of the semester we only created a few videos. One of the reasons was because we did not have a camera. I am happy to say that last week my boss, Shari Hutchinson, bought us a Flip camera so we could record videos. It is very small, but we have some big ideas of how it can be used.

One part of the project that never got off the ground was sending out mass emails and text messages to listeners. I was never really sure how to get it done or really even where to go with it, once we did get it done. So in the meantime I settled for people just getting updates on Twitter. In the future I would like for there to be a way for people to go to our website and subscribe to receive emails and text alerts from us.

The last part of my project consisted of two different objectives involving iTunes. First I wanted to get podcasts of our shows in the iTunes store and I also wanted to create an iTunes app for ETV Radio. This proved to be more difficult than I thought. One of our shows Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz was already in the store, but because it had commercials embedded into it from NPR, we really couldn’t call it our own podcast. The other thing was deciding whether or not we could charge for the podcasts since we are not only a state agency, but also a public radio station. In the end I realized there was not much I could do with this in a semester. Through my research I learned of other podcast hosting sites and will maybe look into one of those instead of going through the iTunes store.

As far as the app for ETV Radio is concerned, I did spend a lot of time looking into it, I even got someone from ETV’s Creative Services Department involved. I found a radio station app that I really liked and just when I was about to email them to see if I could use their script, it was announced last week that iTunes would not be accepting anymore single station radio apps because lately there had been an abundance of them submitted to the iTunes store and they were considered to be too much like spam. While it seemed that my hopes were dashed, it turns out they weren’t turning down all single-station apps, just the ones that were being mass produced. I think that we have a unique product, because we are actually an eight station network with two different formats, so hopefully when the time comes, our app will be approved.

Finally a part of the project that I did not originally include my internship was creating an online photo album for ETV. This simply came about because we realized that we had all of these old photos that were gathering dust. We wanted to put them on the web, so that our listeners could look at them and comment on them.

As I said in my last reflection, ETV has a new president, Mrs. Linda O’Byron. She officially started on December 1st and wanted to meet with all the departments at ETV. Radio was the first department that she met with. Throughout the course of the meeting, she kept referring to “new media” and “convergence”. Normally in this situation, I would have just kept quiet and let my co-workers do the talking, but I felt like I really needed to do speak up, one, so that one she would know who I am. Secondly a lot of the questions were directed towards me since I had been dealing with social media. I am so glad that I’ve been reading about the subject, so that I knew what I was talking about. Also since I am taking the management class at the same time as the internship, l’ve been doing a lot of research on social media policies, which was quite helpful. She liked a lot of my ideas and mentioned me being on a strategic planning committee with some of the other departments.

She also mentioned iTunes in the meeting; however she brought up a different aspect of it. She talked about some of our shows being in iTunes university. When I told her about my idea for an iTunes app and the podcast she was very excited and scribbled some notes. So just when I thought my quest to get ETV Radio into iTunes had been shot dead, it looks like it has new life.

This internship opportunity was amazing. As a journalism undergrad one of the things I always regretted was not having an internship. Even before the class began, I agonized for months over where my internship should be. I came up with a lot of good ideas, but in the end this was best place for me. Not only did I not have to worry about taking time off from work for the internship, but working on the project offered a lot of opportunities for me at work.

For instance I was able to attend the SC Ed Tech Conference, as well as a number of workshops and webinars. I have also been given the opportunity to present at the African-American conference that ETV is hosting in February. Also since Shari knew about my technology skills, she came to me when Radio was asked to give a presentation at the Christmas party for the new president. She wants me to head up the team for creating a jazzy presentation about ETV Radio. Instead of Power Point, I am planning on using Prezi. Although Prezi is not a necessarily a social media tool, it is a Web 2.0 tool. Shari told the director of Education at ETV that I was using a “new” type of PowerPoint, and he requested me for me to show him how to use it. After our meeting he told me that he would love to have me work in his department. I am so excited because that’s exactly where I want to be.

So I feel that in this regard, not only did I meet my own personal goals for my internship, but I also fulfilled the goals of the Ed Tech program. No matter which internship I would have chosen, I think that the objectives of the program would have been the same: to familiarize my co-workers with the technology skills I’ve obtained, lead and manage a group project, and bolster my confidence so that I was comfortable talking in front of people, whether it was with one person or several.

If it had not been for the Ed Tech program I would have never known what a Web 2.0 tool was. I am also incorporating Adobe Flash and Windows Movie Maker in my presentation. During the creation of the presentation, I am using the steps of the ADDIE method. I met with my co-workers and we decided what we wanted the presentation to include. We had to decide what we thought best represented ETV Radio. Then I used a storyboard and an outline to organize my ideas. I am in the process now of developing the project. It will be shown to the entire staff on Friday the 17th, but before then it will be shown to the Mrs. O’Byron on the 13th, so I guess she can evaluate it.

One problem we keep running into regarding our staff presentation for ETV is the lack of pictures and videos that we have. We realize now that we should have got a camera sooner to document events. Other than that, I honestly cannot think of anything that I would do differently in the internship because overall everything turned out like I wanted to except Facebook, which I haven’t given up on yet. If I had to name one thing, I would say the Second Life experience. I would have planned a little bit better for it. However if all of those setbacks hadn’t occurred, I wouldn’t know how to prepare, so I am grateful for the mishaps.

As far as conflicting results, the group projects we experienced in the Ed Tech program were not the same in reality. The members of my group at work do not care if they do a good job at work because their grades do not depend on it (and unfortunately neither do their jobs.) Since I am the main person working on the presentation the responsibility ultimately falls on me. Also there aren’t any defined roles in the presentation. I would have to say that I am the graphic designer and. I would not call myself a Subject Matter Expert since there are people that have been working there much longer than I have, and probably have a better idea of what to include than what I do.

So while I did not have very many conflicting results for the internship itself I did have some confusion about the internship class. In previous Ed Tech programs even though the classes were online, I felt connected to my classmates. I felt very disconnected from them in this class. It was especially odd for me coming out of the class over the summer that talked about the characteristics of online classes such as introductions and photos. I often found myself forgetting who was in the class with me. I finally resolved these feelings by reminding myself that normally internships are done by yourself.

I feel a strong sense of pride when I think about what I’ve accomplished. I am thrilled when someone asks me to help them with something involving social media. I feel important, (but not too important, because that was actually a negative side effect of being in charge of social media according to one of my readings.) I also feel more confident when speaking to people It was frustrating when things did not work out in Facebook. Although I was also frustrated when my attempt at Second Life didn’t work out, I was mainly embarrassed when because I had told so many people about it.

I definitely have mixed emotions about completing this internship. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been if I actually had an internship at some place other than where I work. I would probably burst into tears on my last day. For so long I just wanted to reach this point in grad school and now that’s it’s coming to an end, I really wish I had more time left in the program. I am also sad to leave the Ed Tech program, because I will no longer be in the loop about cutting edge technology. Will I still be cool and important?

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would love to take more classes. I’m getting choked up thinking about next semester being my last. Words cannot express how much I have enjoyed this program. I feel like I have made a real connection with my professors as well as my classmates. I consider them all my friends. I will enjoy (or try to enjoy) the rest of the time I have left in the program and strive to be a lifelong learner. I also hope to improve on what I started here at ETV and when the time comes for me to leave, I want to pass on the social media initiative so that it will continue to prosper.