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Friday, January 29, 2016

Richardson Olmsted School, Easton- January 29th

42° 03' 28" N
71° 06' 40" W 
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far!
 



We're back! Last night we had a wonderful family EarthView night with the students and families from Center School and Moreau Hall. Today we are back at Richardson Olmsted for more fun! Today, students from the nearby ParkView Elementary school will be seeing EarthView.

We visited the school last Friday and got to display our lovely new welcome mat!


As seen from our blog post last week, we were expected to get snow last Saturday (1/23) but at the time the weather forecast was still unsure of how much snow we would get. We certainly got lucky and did not get the worst of the storm but the Bridgewater area did receive about 6 inches of snow according to the National Weather Service. While we did not hit the jackpot for this past snowstorm, areas in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. sure did! Snowfall records were beaten at all three New York City airports, Newark reported 28.1", LaGuardia reported 27.9", and JFK reported 30.5"!!

We aren't the only ones who like to have fun in the snow! Check out this video of Tian Tian, a Giant Panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. having loads of fun in the snow!




We hope that the students (and families) of Richardson Olmsted, Center School, and Moreau Hall all enjoyed their visits with Earthview these last two weeks! We hope to be back again soon!

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Family Geography Night at Richardson Olmsted School, Easton- January 28th

42° 03' 28" N
71° 06' 40" W 
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far!
 



This week EarthView is brought back to the Richardson Olmsted School in Easton! We are very excited for tonight as it is the first time that we'll be having an EarthView Family Night at the school!

Tonight, students and their families from two of the other elementary schools in town, Center School and Moreau Hall will be able to experience EarthView!

We love when families are able to come and see EarthView for themselves, the adults are almost always in the same awe that the children are when seeing it for the first time!  

Tonight is going to be a fun night of geography, education, community, and family! We look forward to a great night! 

Friday, January 22, 2016

We're Number 18! Or Are We?

During our visit to the Richardson-Olmsted School, the EarthView team went to lunch at the nearby Andrew's Bakery, also in Easton. Among the many great things about this bakery is its use of randomly-assigned numbers to match customers to their orders. Our group got number 18:
Or was it 81?

Or was it infinity?
Or maybe infinity, infinitely
We are geographers, but we can have fun with math, too!

Incidentally, our new EarthView Welcome Mat includes the word welcome in 18 languages. Coincidence? You decide!

Seja Welcome

We always welcome students to EarthView. Now we welcome them with our terrific new welcome mat, found by one of our EarthView Wranglers. Humans speak thousands of languages -- a few of them are represented here.
HEBREW - SPANISH
FRENCH - THAI
TELUGU - DUTCH - MANDARIN
ENGLISH - IRISH GAELIC
RUSSIAN - KOREAN
HINDI - ARABIC - SWEDISH
GERMAN - JAPANESE

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Richardson Olmsted School, Easton- January 22nd

42° 03' 28" N
71° 06' 40" W 
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far!
 




Today's EarthView visit brings us to the Richardson Olmsted School in Easton! This is our first visit back to the school since February of 2012! We are excited to be back!

Our last visit to the school was back when it was considered to be two different schools, H.H. Richardson and F.L. Olmsted. The schools were named for a building architect (Richardson) and a landscape architect (Olmsted) when they were built in 1996. In July of 2014, the school committee decided to change the name of the school to Richardson Olmsted as the "two" schools had been operating as one with only one principal and one PTA for a number of years. So we are thrilled to be visiting Richardson Olmsted for the next two Fridays and attending their Geography Night next Thursday (1/28)!

On our last visit to the school, a curious 4th grade student asked Dr. Hayes-Bohanan, "If coffee isn't in the chocolate family, what is?". He answered that question in a blog post that you can find here. Some quick fun information about the town of Easton can be found in our other blog post for that same visit here


Hurricane Alex
In an update to last week's blog post, Hurricane Alex did make landfall in the Azores off of Portugal but as a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70mph. The damage from the storm was a lot less than what the residents are prepared for luckily. 

Locally, we are threatened with a Blizzard this weekend. Luckily for us, we are not in the threat of the most snowfall. Which is good because we got our fill of snow last winter! The areas that are most threatened by the storm are further south of us, in the Washington D.C. area. They could see up to 2 feet of snow! For us, the storm is not supposed to reach here until afternoon Saturday but would last through to Sunday morning leaving behind 6-12 inches possibly. While Saturday is only a day away it is still too early to tell where the storm will go exactly, things could change! 


Blizzard Potential Snow 1/21-1/24

But we are tough New Englanders, we can handle whatever this snowstorm brings us.



FUN FACT:

The EarthView team learned that when she was in fourth grade, Ms. Athanasiou (3rd-grade teacher at Richardson-Olmsted) won the GEOGRAPHY BEE at her school in Rhode Island!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School, Johnston, RI- January 15th

41° 49' 47" N
71° 30' 07" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far!





Welcome back to our regular Friday school visits Earthlings! We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season and are happy to be back in the routine again. 

Our first visit of the new year brings us to Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School in Johnston, Rhode Island! This is our second visit ever to the school! We last visited Ferri Middle on April 10th while the students were learning about Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Our blog post for that visit includes a link to a special online typewriter that converts writing into hieroglyphs! You will have to check it out here

Today's visit comes just a few days after Dr. Hayes-Bohanan and Dr. Domingo visited the WBZ1030 AM radio station on Monday January 11th for their Geography education discussion with Dan Rae on his nightly talk show, NightSide. They had a nice discussion about why geography education is so important and what kind of jobs you can end up with if you study geography at the college level. Geography is such an important area to study, we use it everyday and we usually do not even realize it. The link to the podcast for their showcase on NightSide can be found here: NightSide - Where In The World Did Geography Class Go?

aspects of geography

In other news, there's a hurricane brewing in the Atlantic! While January is known for it's blizzards and nor'easters, a different weather event is forming and threatening the Azores off of the coast of Portugal. Hurricane Alex developed on Wednesday and is the first Atlantic Hurricane to form during the month of January since Hurricane Alice formed in January of 1955. The Atlantic Hurricane season officially runs from June 1st through November 30th but that doesn't stop hurricanes from forming outside of their typical season. Hurricane Alex is expected to impact the Azores Friday morning with at least 85mph winds and will drop up to 7 inches of rain in some spots. Flash floods and mudslides could result from the storm. Alex is not expected to threaten the United States or other parts of Europe but will most likely track towards Greenland. 

National Hurricane Center



Today is also the 97th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood. It sounds humorous, but it was actually a very serious tragedy that took place in the North End. To learn more, read the story from Mass Moments and then see the geography lessons about the flood that BSU education students developed, based on the book Dark Tide.

We hope that the students of Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School enjoy their visit with EarthView and we hope to be back again soon!