Celebrating EAST’s unique impactwhile sharing our unique strengths.

2012-13

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COMMUNICATIONSPLAN

As surely as the sun willrise in the eastern sky

tomorrow, the hopes anddreams of students will rise

in the EAST Initiative.

This EAST Initiative Communications Plan utilizes an aggressive social media schedule as a self-directed publishing center to raise awareness of EAST Initiative programs and their impact on students,facilitators, and their communities.

Participation of staff, students, facilitators, parents, and partners will exponentially elevate the success of this plan. The EASTcommunications team recommends a five-plank plan to celebratethe success of EAST students and facilitators, promote the substance and significant of their contributions through EAST, andultimately raise awareness of the EAST Initiative’s impact on the promise and potential of our students and education model.

I. Social Media Plan

II. Quarterly E-Magazine

III. Alumni Association

IV. External Publicity Efforts

V. Future Goals

To use social media to raise awareness of EAST’s mission, impact and history;

To support the formation of an active alumni association and galvanize its membership into acting as EAST ambassadors;

To create venues for students and teachers to share their ideas and provide feedback;

To capture and publicize EAST success stories;

To improve communication with EAST programs throughout Arkansas, strengthen their connection with EAST Initiative, and engage them as ambassadors for growth of EAST Initiative;

To improve communication with EAST programs outside Arkansas, strengthen their connection with EAST Initiative, and engage them as ambassadors for EAST Initiative;

To expand online resources for students and facilitators and free EAST staff for more complex problems and specialized issues;

To strengthen internal communications among EAST staff; and engage them in the communications process.

Goals

The EAST Initiative has a well-documented track record of success with improving test scores, community connections and relationships, collaborative and problem-solving skills, technical abilities, and many other relevant professional traits. EAST provides the tools and inspires the passion and desire to excel necessary for today’s elementary, middle, junior and senior high school students to be competitive in tomorrow’s workforce. This communications plan is designed to allow the EAST Initiative to lift up our student success stories, anchored by our clients (students, facilitators, parents, community partners) sharing their testimoney to raise awareness and support for the collective efforts of the EAST Initiative.

There are many worthy organizations that share EAST’s project-based learning approach. There are those who are also highly successful in building the student’s knowledge of technology and ability to use it. A vital, and magical, outcome that is unique to EAST is its emphasis on community service. This plank in the EAST model allows our students to grow in ways no other model can accomplish. EAST students form a connection to their communities, connecting their education to the overall health of their towns. EAST students engage in solving problems in the world in which they live, developing a civic-minded mentality and the ability to work within the framework of their local governments. EAST students are inspiring and encouragingteammates in the workforce, always seeking to exceed their initial goals and take their solutions further than requested or expected. There are literally thousands of individual student success stories happening in EAST classrooms every school year. Stories that, when shared, inspire goose bumps and hope in all of us for the future.

This magical, hopeful by-product of a student’s EAST experience makes it possible for us to embrace a symbol that not only makes a smooth mental connection with our acronym, it also represents the very sentiment that separates the EAST experience from other project-based learning or technology-based education programs. The rising sun. The definition of “east” in the dictionary includes “the distant point on the horizon where the sun rises.” The EAST Initiative provides students and educators with a vision of the distant horizon that represents their future, and their hopes and dreams for that future rise throughout their EAST experience. This plan is designed to highlight student growth and impact in a variety of ways, through a variety of channels, to encourageour connection to the image of the promise and reliability of the sun that always rises in the eastern sky.

This communications plan maximizes the EAST Initiative’s ability to self-publish our story and leverage the results into a publicity campaign. The organizational message will be coordinated among a variety of Internet-based “channels,” maximizing each for their unique strengths and audience. The plan relies on the communications section’s improved dialogue with schools, facilitators, parents and civic leaders to build programming for each channel, and the audience for the resultant inventory.

The EAST Initiative’s funding goals have also been considered, with particular attention to supporting the expansionof the alumni association, its annual event, and collateral materials to be included with membership.

This plan also includes elements designed to capture the success stories of EAST programs funded by individual schools rather than Dept. of Education dollars in an effort to support EAST’s growth outside the state of Arkansas.

RATIONALE

SOCIAL MEDIAEASTINITIATIVE.ORGThe EAST Initiative’s website will remain the hub of its publishing efforts. It will be the primaryportal for distribution of documents and announcements, school compliance and monitoring,and official correspondence with students and facilitators. Matt Dozier’s blog will be updatedweekly, utilizing guest bloggers and summaries of media coverage to expand the messagepossibilities for the space, and to create an archive on the website that truly captures a snapshot of our progress on a weekly basis. Internal hyperlinks will be used to guide viewers through our website. External hyperlinks to our partners, products and national thought leaderswill raise our standing in search engines while enhancing our relationships with meaningfulallies to our mission.

FaceBook represents an opportunity for EAST to quickly connect with students, facilitators, and their friends and families that network with them on this channel. The summer of 2012 was an excellent time to experiment with a variety of approaches to this venue. With the vast majority of EAST students on summer break, traffic to our organization’s sites andpages is dramatically lower than during the school year. Consequently, those tactics that resonatedwith our audience stood out and are scheduled for weekly deployment. Marginal results willbe given additional exposure as content curation allows. The schedule sets forth four weekly postsas a minimum, with a maximum of three posts per day.

Regular weekly features will include: ◊ A weekly video ◊ A poll or survey question ◊ Photo albums of projects and events ◊ Re-posts from national thought leaders in technology and education Weekly programming will be supplemented with re-posts from Facebook pages of EAST schools, Twitter updates automatically posted on the page, special announcements, re-posts of highperformers on EAST’s Pinterest and Instagram pages, links to EAST stories in the news, TSGtutorials and teasers, etc.

FACEBOOK

TWITTERTwitter is the EAST Initiative’s tickertape for headlines, blog updates, breaking news, and timely needs.It also represents an opportunity to increase awareness about EAST with legislators, corporate, andcivic leaders with outgoing tweets. The list of local and national thought leaders in the education and technology arenas that we follow offers us an opportunity to build relationships and credibility outsidethe state of Arkansas, as well as providing a valuable resource for content curation for our other channels.

Youtube The EAST Initiative will use our Youtube to channel as an original source for video posts which are repurposed for our website, our FaceBook page, and announced through Twitter. Our channel will be updated weekly, unless the activity of EAST schools is great enough to warrant more frequent posting. Updates will largely consist of student generated content, created by EAST schools for their own pages, or as their participation in our promotional efforts. We are also working to create opportunities for students to showcase their production skills and participate in external marketing efforts we hope to implement during the 2012-13 school year. The communications team proposes the following new programming:

◊ Student-produced video reports on their projects ◊ Facilitators, current, and former EAST student submissions for video contest ◊ Internally produced videos shot during facilitator interviews ◊ Internally produced tech tutorials

Television coverage of EAST schools in the news will also be shared through our Youtube channel.

The communications team proposes co-sponsoring a video contest entitled, “What Does EAST Mean to Me?” Sponsors will be secured to fund cash prizes for the top three finishers in three categories: facilitator, current EAST student, and EAST alumni. Videos must be no more than four minutes in length and be eligible for publication. A budget of $6000 will fund a $1000, a $500, and two $250 winners in each category.◊◊

Classmates.com The EAST Initiative will set up a page on Classmates.com as part of our efforts to connect with EAST alumni nationally. Event information about the alumni association, the search for alumni, the annual conference, and the annual Alumni gala will be posted on this site, as well as photography from the events when they are held.

Instagram EAST’s Instagram presence will consist of beautiful images, coupled with thought-provoking and inspirational quotes, reinforcing the growth experienced by students in the EAST Initiative. EAST students will be invited to particpate in producing the posts and sharing with their networks. Photo demonstrations and tutorials produced by EAST’s technical support team will also debut in this space. EAST’s Facebook and twitter accounts will be synced with Instagram updates.

Pinterest Content curation for Pinterest will mimic content produced for Instagram. Pinterest may also represent an opportunity to visually showcase student projects.

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