Kaye Sweetser, Karen Russell, Mihaela Vorvoreanu and Robert French offer class assignments for PR educators to consider:

Class blogs

• Using Blogger or WordPress, add each student as an author.
• Russell instructed students to make a post or comment at least five times during the semester. In the beginning, Russell frequently posted helpful links and class-related examples. As the semester progressed, students felt more comfortable posting.
• Sweetser encouraged students to use the blog as a way to react to relevant issues. It’s a nice way for students to build their online portfolios.
• French commented that blogging should be part of every class, as PR students can never have too much practice writing. He asks students to comment on PR practitioners blogs.
• Vorvoreanu looks at a class blog as a body of knowledge. A group of people can learn more together than one person can alone. At the end of the semester, she burned each student a disk with this “body of knowledge.” She asked each student to read a book and post a “thought paper” on the blog.

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Students at Edelman Digital Bootcamp got a unique and valuable opportunity this morning to have a Q & A session with Edelman’s Steve Field, Erin Caldwell and Chris Broomall among others. The students took advantage of this opportunity and picked the brains of the accomplished Edelman representatives on various aspects of new media in PR.

After the Q & A session, students returned to their small groups.  Check out this podcast for a listen into the session.

It’s official.  EDB is full.  If you did not get signed up, you can follow us here for live-blogging from the conference tomorrow.

 There are still a few spots for educators, but not much time left.  Register now!

The educators that attend EDB will have a different agenda from the students.

There will be a small, interactive panel that will cover how to use specific tools and  make lesson plan/assignment recommendations for social media in your existing classes. Phil Gomes will spend the day with you giving out his wisdom and knowledge of social media. You will also get the chance to observe student groups brainstorming campaign ideas.

You’re registered and psyched to come to EDB, but you pull out your
bag and stop…
What should you bring?

Here are the EDB teams suggestions…

laptop
resume/ business cards
business casual clothes
a great attitude ready to learn about social media

A team of UGA students assisted Edelman in the research and logistics for EDB. Below is a list of their names and assignments during the campaign. You can also check out more information about them on their LinkedIn profile.
Karen Baxter is a senior majoring in public relations at the University of Georgia. Baxter is a member of the publicity committee for the Edelman Digital Bootcamp. Baxter has written social media releases, press releases and other articles for media coverage of the event.

Haley Binowski graduated magna cum laude from Clemson University in May 2007. Currently, Binowski is a graduate student at the UGA studying mass communication and public relations. Binowski is a member of the research team and also in charge of the campaign book for EDB.

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Today the Athenians are breaking out the toboggans and mittens, but this weekend’s weather looks fair:

Friday- High 63/Low 46 Partly Cloudy

Saturday- High 68/Low 37 Sunny

Sunday- High 68/Low 43 Sunny

Great weather for a great weekend!  Can’t wait to see everyone!

Here are your questions, here are our answers. Feel free to add more!

Q: How long will Saturday’s conference last?

A: Check-in begins at 8 a.m. and the conference should be over by 5:30 p.m. The reception at East West Bistro will begin at 7 p.m. and end at about 10 p.m.

Q: What do I need to bring with me?

A: Business casual clothes, laptop, a notepad and a willingness to get your mind blown away by social media. Okay, just teasing a bit, but definitely count on the first few items if you can. For those of you looking for post-graduation opportunities don’t forget your resumes and/or business cards.

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We can’t wait to see everyone in Athens for some hands-on social media training. We will post important information about the conference. Let us know if you have any questions about the event and make sure to stop by to see new posts. Here’s some crucial information for potential attendees:

You can register online now.

Price is $25 for students to go to the Bootcamp and reception at East West Bistro. That’s a great deal, let’s be honest, even for college students. Tons of networking chances and social media fun to be had, so register early to secure a spot!

If you can’t go to our daytime conference, you can pay just $10 for the networking reception at East West.

Educators can look forward to round table discussions led by Phil Gomes and learning to integrate social media in the classroom for only $40.

Remember space is limited so register early and bring friends for a great weekend in Athens.

It will be worth your time. Trust me.

Before we began planning the Edelman Digital Bootcamp in earnest, we began with questions. Lots of questions in fact: what should we discuss, how long should the event be, with which tools you were familiar.

The truth is we thought we had a lot of answers. We were completely ready to plan a two-day event but thankfully like good PR practitioners we conducted research instead of going with our gut.

And so we deployed our survey to more than 50 PR schools in the Southeast even though we thought we already knew what you would say. Boy, are we glad we asked!

When the responses came in, from nearly 170 students and 295 educators (a 29% response rate), we were truly surprised to find that nearly 85 percent of students wanted a one-day event! A fact we would have never guessed had we not conducted research.

That was just the beginning of the great things we learned:
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