For project #3, I titled my campaign “Technology: An Ally or Enemy of Education”. My campaign highlighted education in the digital age and focused on the benefits and drawbacks of technology based education. The three genres that I chose to use for my campaign were a wix page, which worked as the hub for all of my genres as well as the main source of information. I also wrote a children’s book where I told the story of a girl who did not know how to fact check the information she found on the internet, therefore falling victim to a common mistake that many students face when they only rely on the internet and do not put in the proper work to ensure that the information they have found is reliable. The last genre I created was a twitter site which was my main mode of promotion for project three. I followed classmates and educators who specialize in the use of technology in education. I also tweeted out polls and different facts throughout the course of my promotion process. For this specific topic, my audience would be anyone who is being educated, or anyone who is doing the educating themselves. That is a very wide range of people and ages.

The genres I used each appealed to a specific demographic. The twitter was more geared towards teens and young-adults because this is the age group that is most heavily involved in social media. The wix page was full of facts and information, so my main audience for that page would be teachers and other adults in the technology and education fields. The children’s book was mainly aimed at a younger crowed. Because this topic is beneficial for any age group that is using technology for education, I felt these three genres were well suited for a wide range of ages. The rhetorical appeals that I utilized to complete this project were ethos and logos. Ethos was used because I did a lot of research on the topic, so the information I was using to create my three genres was valid and reliable. Logos was also used because there were a lot of facts within my three genres. The points that I was making were logical and were backed by factual information. The tools that I used to complete my three genres were Wix.com, Twitter, and MyStoryBook.com.

I used the wix page I created to be the hub for all three of my genres. Within my wix page, there were links to the twitter account and the children’s book. The only social media account I utilized was twitter. I promoted my wix account and my children’s book on the twitter I created for project #3, as well as the twitter account I already had for this class. I also used my project #3 twitter account to reach out to different people in the educational technology field. I did not create a hashtag, but I put polls up on my twitter account and tagged different tech/education people that had followed me back in posts. On my twitter account, I followed 107 people in hopes that they would follow me back. I followed ENC 2135 classmates, different libraries and educational organizations, as well as people involved in the field of educational technology. Of those 107 people, 23 followed me back. One of the most exciting followers on my twitter was Matt Harris, @MattHarrisEdu, who has over 7,000 followers. He is an educational technology advisor who travels around the world promoting the use of technology in education. I began my twitter page, and my promotion, on April 8th.

Though I got some attention through my twitter page, I began sending out text messages and emails to friends and family with a link to my wix account in order to gain more attention for my three genres. I got a lot of feedback from people that I had texted or emailed the link to, so that was my most successful form of promotion. I was able to get updates on my phone of how many people viewed my wix site, however I did not know I could do that until after a little over a week into my promotion. I was notified of 15 views to my wix account, one of which was from New Zealand! However, there could have been more views prior to me downloading the app that notified me when people viewed my page.

The composition process for project #3 proved to be a bit more challenging than the composition process for project #2. For project #3, I had to be a lot more creative. Coming up with three genres that were different from one another, but also were cohesive so that the promotion process was easy, was a little bit more of a challenge than writing a research paper.
I had written research papers in high school, but I had never had to take the information I found and turn it into a completely different and creative genre. The composition process for project three was more independent than the composition process for project #2 was. For project #2, there were set instructions that we had to follow, but project #3 was much less structured. We had a lot more creative freedom during the composition process of project #3, which could be a good and a bad thing at times. When creating my three genres for project #3, I had to find a way to share the facts and information that I had included in project two in a fresh and engaging way. For project #2, all I had to do was gather information and put it into an informative and cohesive paper, but for project #3 I had the additional task of not only providing factual information, but presenting it in a way that would hook viewers and inform them without having them read an entire paper.

As I said before, coming up with three creative genres and informing viewers without giving them an information overload was the most challenging aspect I faced when composing project #3 that I did not face when composing project #2. Before beginning project #2, I would have told myself to use some sources that I could later easily contact when promoting my project three. It would have made my promotion process easier if I had used some sources that had twitter accounts so that I could have easily contacted them. Although the promotion of my project and the process of actually getting people to view my genres was a bit difficult, I really enjoyed my topic and found that a lot of the research and work I did while completing project #2 was very helpful in my creation and promotion of my three genres for project #3.