Discovery Education at the USA Science and Engineering Festival on the National mall

Today I helped at Discovery Education's booth at the giant science festival at the Mall.  Kids would walk through and we would do different activities with them.  The one activity that I worked with the most is an easy experiment that kids can do.  You take two soda bottles and tape them together with water in them and you flip it over and shake it.  The outcome of the air moving up from one bottle to the other from the shaking is a tornado in the top bottle.  Kids would watch me do it then try it themselves.  It was a lot of fun and I got the opportunity to work with other Discovery Education employees.

Keeping Busy as Usual...

The last few days have been great I've had a ton of different things to do.  Yesterday I started working on updating the USADA (US Anti-Doping Agency) press releases from last year for this year's competition. This competition, the True Sport Awards, is an opportunity for teachers to compete with their innovative ideas for new programs for their schools to implement that involve preserve the integrity of competition and healthy living.  I also looked through many articles about Obama appearing on Discovery's Mythbusters to see if there were mentioned of Discovery Education and then complied those articles together. 
It is important for us to follow local coverage of Discovery Education events we hold with schools.  I also did research to look for local coverage of an event we held in  Katy, Texas and compiled those as well.

I met Andrew Grinc this morning, who works in the internal communications department of Discovery.  He mainly works on employee relations, so he tells everyone in the company any important news and events that go on in the different departments.  He is the person that I was working with when I dressed up as Mrs. Potatohead for the launch of hub.  He discussed some of the things he is currently working on, such as the up-coming launch of another network- OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.  He discussed his challenges with this network launch (the idea that this is a very female-focused network but you don;t want to totally ignore the other half of the employees that work here) as well as other challenges, such as deciding which events and news from which departments are top priorities. This was very informational and helpful, as well as interesting because every morning I check the portal, which is the Discovery Communications connection website, and now I can put a face to all the hard work that goes into creating and maintaining this page.

Today I finalized my drafts of the USADA press releases.  I'm now working on a big project where I edit and compile videos of news media coverage to make a 2010 Discovery Education Montage.

what am I doing at my internship?

There are two great things about Discovery:
1. I am always busy
2. I am always doing something different

I am never doing any administrative jobs.  Stephen always has me doing something that actually makes a difference in this department.  On any given day I can be doing anything from simply typing up an article to writing an actual press release that will be distributed to the media.  Meetings are central to working at Discovery and most days I will either sit in on a call with Stephen or I will have my own private meeting with someone else at Discovery to learn a little more about them and how the company works (as I described in previous posts).  I read many articles about education and need to make sure I am up -to-date on things going on within the industry.  I find myself everyday learning and researching something new that involves Discovery itself.  Before working here I could have never imagined how many facets there are to this company, and each day I learn more. 
I think one of my favorite aspects of work is how I am always doing something different.  In other internships I was always doing one thing or another.  Here, I don't mind doing a media list because I know I am good at putting them together in an effective manner, but I also know that it is not the only thing I will be doing for days on end.  I like the whole idea of surprise each day when I come in and having no clue what I will be doing until I get here.
 Today I had a meeting with a woman from HR who I asked to speak with me a little about the possibility of a spring internship.  It was a very informative meeting and I was able to learn about the various communication opportunities at DCI.

A couple more pictures that were posted on the Discovery Portal

Launch of hub!

                                          Photo op with David Zaslav, President and CEO of DCI

The Launching of HUB!

On 10.10.10 Discovery will be launching a new network called Hub, which is a kid's network.  In order to create attention and hype within the company, the internal communications department put together a week of fun activities for employees to partake in, such as a board games day and other things. Another fun way to get employees excited was to have a giant Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead walk around in the atrium, as well as different floors throughout the building.  Of all the interns at Discovery Communications I was the lucky one chosen to dress up as Mrs. Potatohead!  All morning I walked around to greet people and take pictures with them and Mr. Potatohead (another intern who actually turned out to be from Milburn, the town next to mine back home in NJ!)
The highlight of my morning: Meeting and taking a picture with David Zaslav President and CEO of Discovery Communications Inc., (DCI).  Well, I sort of met him.  It's more like Mrs. Potatohead met him, but either way it was still awesome.