And so it begins

I have so far survived my first 3 days of interning at a corporate media giant. Monday I spent most of the day in orientation with about 60 other interns learning about the history of the corporation, trying to meet people, and exploring the large labyrinth of a building that is the world Headquarters of Discovery Communications.

I am interning for one of the many branches of the company named Discovery Education; an almost completely online product which primarily provides a library of thousands of segmented educational videos for classroom use. It is an interactive product exemplifying the innovative nature of web 2.0 technologies and is already present in about 50% of U.S. schools and is continuing to expand to more U.S. school districts and international markets.

My on site manager is Stephen Wakefield who is the Communications manager for Discovery Education. We discussed a number of projects that I will be working on throughout the summer term:

1.) Formulate and Implement a plan to raise awareness of Discovery Education Products and services among current students in schools of education through the placement of stories about the use of new educational technologies and Discovery Education Services in college School of Education newsletters and newspapers. These placements will be merchandised back the sales team
2.) Write, distribute and follow up on the distribution of press releases following the DEN National Institute in San Francisco in July. She will then merchandise these stories back to the sales team
3.) Undertake a variety of research projects including research into emerging edubloggers, current state science coordinators, current state superintendents etc. In addition she will research past press releases for usable marketing quotes for the marketing team.
4.) Build and implement an editorial calendar that provides regular updates from the communications department on the DEN Twitter account

That is just an overview of my duties but new things come up each day. I still have a lot to learn but I am pretty excited about what the summer has in store.