Destination Imagination
One of the many great things about working in the Education department at Nat Geo is a shared passion to make a difference in our communities. Every day the people in this office have the opportunity to reach the minds of thousands and thousands of children, teenagers, and adults. That is an amazing power to hold. We are a direct connection between the science community and everyday people. For example, there are enormous amounts of scientific research articles being published every week, but only a tiny fraction of them reach the public. The problem isn't that these research articles are inaccessible, rather it's that they are unreadable to the general public who struggle to understand and relate to the information being released. My goal, and the goal of Nat Geo Education, is to be a translator, interpreter, and teacher for the non-scientists in our society. We convert the important scientific research of today into a reader-friendly version, something that is still informative and factual but also gives anyone the ability to walk away with a better understanding of the subject matter.
This past week I was assigned a number of different "busy work" jobs. I've done a multitude of emailing and contacting partner organizations for GNP. I also had a great time tracking down some lost UPS packages. But on the plus side, I'm now on a first name basis with Mail Services and that is a very powerful relationship to have! Despite all of the cool and exciting opportunities I've had so far, at the end of the day I'm still an intern. They busy work was sure to start eventually.
This week I met Sam; my second supervisor who just came back from an event in Tennessee called Destination Imagination. If you've never heard of this, you should Google it. It's basically a weeklong convention of over 20,000 students from Kindergarten to University level, who compete in teams to solve open-ended Challenges and present their solutions at tournaments. The programs are designed to promote higher order thinking and improve creative thinking, critical thinking, and collaborative problem solving. It's a mix between robotics, the environment, and creative design... on steroids. These students come to this convention from all over the nation and are absolutely ecstatic to be there. So what better place to launch the official announcement of the Great Nature Project than into a stadium full of screaming children and teens? Check out the video of Nat Geo's GNP announcement below and maybe you'll get a small idea of how absolutely insane this event is! Personally, it makes me want to be a kid again...
Improvisation Time
Speaking of screaming children... Friday was the annual Anacostia Environmental Youth Summit, and, being the education enthusiast that I am, I volunteered to go and help man the Nat Geo booth. My motivations may have been slightly intensified by the fact that we were given free Nat Geo t-shirts, but all the same, I showed up to help teach local 6th-8th graders about geography and the environment. So you can imagine my surprise when we found out the entire Summit consisted of 3rd and 4th graders who were in no way able to complete our junior-level activity. After the first 30 minutes of insane chaos and improvising, me and another intern were able to come up with an activity that basically consisted of matching the endangered, threatened (or just plain interesting) animals to their respective habitat locations. All of a sudden, I was incredibly thankful for the multitude of wildlife documentaries I've watched at 3 in the morning when I couldn't sleep (you know which ones I'm talking about!). Apparently your mind does retain some information at that hour, otherwise there is no way I would have remembered that a pile of elephant crap can attract thousands of dung beetles who will eat and/or bury the entire pile within 2 hours. Coming from a family of all girls, it was truly amazing to me to see how the single mention of a dung beetle could grab the attention of every little boy in the group.Ocean Week 2013
As for this coming week, I'll have some really exciting stuff to share! Capitol Hill Ocean Week 2013 starts this Tuesday and Nat Geo was nice enough to get me tickets for every event (except for the $350 dinner... that seems just a little bit excessive). I'll be listening in on lectures, seminars, and round-table discussions by the nation's greatest marine conservationists, scientists, explorers, and political representatives. They'll be addressing topics from the latest updates on the aftereffects of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill to the strategy behind balancing the economy and coastal threats. Anything you can imagine that has to do with the current state of our oceans will be covered and I'll be reporting it all back here! Hopefully you are as excited as I am, and if you're not.. well I should warn you now that this might not be the blog for you. But if you keep looking, I bet you can find a great read on dung beetles...
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