Citizens for Citizens After School Program, BSU- April 24th

41°59'17"N
70°58'21"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! 

Citizens for Citizens

Today the EarthView team is pleased to welcome the Citizens for Citizens Inc, after school program from Fall River, MA to Bridgewater State University!
Citizens for Citizens Inc. provides a safe environment and educational after school care to the children of the greater Fall River area who are in grades K-8. 

Celebrate Earth Day!

Dunk

Today's visit falls upon the Friday after Earth Day! Earth day is a day when the people of 192 countries come together to participate in worldwide events that promote environmental protection. Earth day was first celebrated on April 22nd, 1970 and has been celebrated on that day ever since. Currently, it is coordinated by the Earth Day Network.

For Earth Day this year, the NSA (National Security Administration) debuted a new Mascot, a friendly recycling bin named Dunk. While, Dunk was specifically created for the school children in Maryland, we can all look to Dunk for tips on recycling! 

While looking for some fun Earth Day activities, we discovered an interactive Footprint Calculator run by the Earth Day Network that shows you what ecological impact that you have on the world. EarthView wrangler, Eva, was surprised by the impact that she has on the Earth when she tries her hardest to recycle and live sustainably, these were her results:

Ecological Footprint by the Earth Day Network

If you would like to learn what your ecological footprint is, you can go here.

Just in time for our journey inside the earth, National Geographic has shared a lesson about what the inside of the Earth is really like!

Some other fun activities for Earth Day can be found on the following websites:
Scholastic: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/celebrate-earth-day
Teacher Vision: https://www.teachervision.com/earth-day/teacher-resources/6612.html
NEA: http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/Earth-Day-Curriculum-Resources-Grades-K-5.html
Earth Day Network: http://www.earthday.org/mobilize-your-students

We hope that the Citizens for Citizens after school program students enjoyed their visit to Bridgewater State University and for seeing our EarthView globe! Happy Earth Day! 

Thomas Jefferson Middle School, Arlington, Virginia- April 20th

38° 52' 10" N
77° 05' 51" 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!

The Earthview team is happy to be returning to Arlington Public Schools to start off Earth Week! Our visit this year is to Thomas Jefferson Middle School on South Old Glebe Road. The road passes through this historic city, and is actually named for the Glebe House, where Dr. Hayes-Bohanan remembers visiting his great-aunt as a child.

The Jefferson School is an ideal location for an EarthView visit. Not only is it sponsoring a variety of exciting events for Earth Week, it is a school that has dedicated itself to global education through the adoption of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years program.

Our previous visit was in April of 2010 when Dr. Hayes-Bohanan and Dr. Domingo visited Long Branch Elementary School, which is located at 38° 52' 28" N, 77° 05' 23" W. Knowing the absolute location of each school allows us to compare their relative locations. Which is farther north and which is farther west? By how much?

Our previous visit coincided with the national meeting of the Association of American Geographers, which is headquartered in nearby Washington, DC and which was meeting in the nation's capital that year. This year's visit also coincides with the annual meeting of the AAG, which is being held in Chicago, Illinois this year. Aside from the EarthView team, many faculty members and students from Bridgewater State University are in Chicago with thousands of other geographers this week.

Dr. James Minor

At today's visit, we will have a special guest visiting us, Dr. James T. Minor, The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education of the US Department of Education. Before working for the DOE, Dr. Minor worked as the Senior Program Officer and Director of Higher Education Programs for  the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia.

We are thankful to Sarah Beaton of the U.S. Department of Education and Patrick Murphy, superintendent of Arlington Public Schools, for their enthusiasm for geography as a 21st-century field of study, and for arranging this visit. We are also grateful to Jefferson Middle School leaders Keisha Boggan and Ellen Smith for hosting this event.

While we are near to the Nation's Capital, we invite friends of geography to support the "Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act" that National Geographic, AAG, and affiliated Alliances throughout the United States have been working on for years. Our nation has no dedicated federal funding to advance geography education. As a result of this, we are facing a crisis in geographic literacy which is jeopardizing our global competitiveness, our position of diplomatic leadership and much more. This act would authorize grants to universities and nonprofit organizations for programs to expand geographic literacy among American students and improve the teaching of geography at the K-12 level.

Blanchard Memorial School, Boxboro- April 17th

42° 28' 56" N
71° 30' 21" 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! 



The EarthView team is excited to be visiting Blanchard Memorial School in Boxboro for the first time today! Our visit today is a long way from home, about 62 miles from BSU but we have traveled much farther before into Middlesex County, like our visit to Tewksbury back in March. 

While the town name is officially spelled Boxborough, it is spelled 'Boxboro' on many highway signs and on official documents, making both spellings of the word correct. This is much like quite a few towns in Massachusetts that end in the word "borough", which means, "an incorporated municipality smaller then a city", including Foxborough (Foxboro), Middleborough (Middleboro) and Marlborough (Marlboro). 

Some fun facts about Boxboro are that as of the 2010 census, only 4,996 people lived in town. In comparison, that is roughly half of the enrolled undergraduates at Bridgewater State University! Boxboro is home to only one elementary school, the one that we are visiting today! Blanchard Memorial is now a part of the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District and students who enter the 7th grade and beyond attend school in nearby Acton. The town is also home to a glacial esker that is over 1 mile in length and is located at the Beaver Valley Preserve. 

Over the weekend, Dr. Hayes-Bohanan was listening to NPR and he happened to hear of something that we would all be interested in! He heard a story of the island, Zanzibar, and the spices that are produced there. 

Zanzibar Island

Zanzibar island is also known as "Spice Island" because it sits in the crosswind of the ancient Eastern Trade Route between Asia and Europe and became a plantation for the growing of spices. Today, it is a large producer of Vanilla, Cinnamon and Nutmeg. 

Vanilla Orchid

When listening to the report on Zanzibar, we learned some interesting thing such as how finicky the Vanilla Orchid is! The Orchid only flowers once a year and the farmers have to pollinate each flower by hand. If the flower is not pollinated by noon that same day then it dies. This is why pure vanilla is so expensive because it takes a lot of work to make, so we are more apt to find the synthetic (artificial) variety in our local stores. 

Cinnamon Tree

Another interesting thing to note is that the laurel tree that Cinnamon grows on has multiple uses! Not only does it produce the cinnamon that we love to put on our toast, the roots are good for colds as they offer a taste that has hints of eucalyptus, sweet basil and menthol. All things that are good ways to treat the common cold and flu!

We hope you enjoyed learning about these things as much as we did and we hope that the students of Blanchard Memorial enjoyed EarthView's visit! 

Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School, Johnston, RI- April 10th

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! 



The EarthView team is pleased to be visiting Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School in Johnston, Rhode Island for the very first time! Our visit today is a long way from our visit on Wednesday which was in Winchester, Massachusetts, some 65 miles North of Johnston, RI. While we have taken EarthView to Rhode Island College in Providence for an event, we have never visited a middle school in the area and we are excited that this is our first! 

Some fun facts about Johnston are that it was once part of Providence until it separated in 1758 and became incorporated on March 6th, 1759. The town was named after the colonial Attorney General, Augustus Johnston  and about 28,800 people currently reside there. 

In preparation for today's visit, we learned that the Social Studies classes are currently focusing on the geography of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. We have decided to include some maps and handy websites if you are interested to learn more about these places!

Ancient Egypt Maps

On the Discovering Egypt website, we found a very nifty hieroglyph typewriter where you can write just about anything in hieroglyphs, the ancient form of Egyptian writing.  

                                                   Can you figure out what this says? 
                                                                                                                
                                     
                                                                            (It says EarthView)

If you would like to discover the art of hieroglyphic writing, visit here!

Ancient Greece

                   A lot of information on Ancient Greece to be found at this website here!

Ancient Rome

What sea is in the middle of these lands? Hint: its name means "in the middle of the land."

And last but certainly not least, there is a lot of fun information to be found here on Ancient Rome! 

We hope that you enjoy learning more about these historic, ancient places! 

TODAY THE CARIBBEAN

On a very different part of the planet, President Barack Obama has been traveling this week. Yesterday, he visited a meeting of CARICOM, the Caribbean Community, in Jamaica. This is a group of 20 countries in and near the Caribbean Sea. Because each country has a small economy, they are part of a common market to buy and sell goods more easily.

Today he is in Panama for a much bigger meeting known as the Summit of the Americas. For the first time in 50 years, the president of the United States will be in the same room as the president of Cuba. Look for plenty of photographs of President Obama and President Raul Castro in the news this weekend.

Winchester Geography Night- April 8th

42° 27' 01" N
71° 08' 05" 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! 



The EarthView team is pleased to be in Winchester for McCall Middle School's Family Geography Night! While this is our first ever time at the Geography Night, we have been to McCall Middle, exactly 4 years ago on April 8th, 2011. 

When we first visited the school, Bridgewater State University was known as Bridgewater State College and our first blog post about the school can be found in our archive on our old web address. 

Tonight's event will be an exciting one with many activities for the students of McCall and their families! While it is an informal move up night where the seventh grade Geography students host the incoming sixth graders, (current fifth graders), it is open to the public. 

Tonight's event will feature geography games where you can test your knowledge, the National Geographic Floor Map of Africa, a performance by the Japanese Taiko Drummers Genki Spark and of course our very own EarthView Globe!

We hope to see you there! 

Howe Manning Elementary, Middleton- April 3rd

42° 35' 47" N
71° 00' 51" 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! 

The Earthview team is happy to be back visiting Howe Manning Elementary School in Middleton for the third year in a row! The blog post for our first visit to the school back in 2012 described a little about the town and you can find that by going here. 

In case you missed the update from last week's post on the Geography Bee, Massachusetts finally has a female to represent our state in the National Geography Bee. Lucy Chae, a 7th grader from Charles E. Brown School in Newton, was the winner of last week's Bee and the first female winner from our state in the Bee's 27 years! 

The runners up were Michael Izdal of Wilson Middle School in Natick and Markus Elbert of Oak Hill Middle School  in Newton. It seems that Newton is doing something right in regards to  Geography Education -- the winner and a runner up reside and attend school there. The EarthView Team wishes Lucy Chae good luck at the National Competition . It will take place in Washington, D.C. from May 11th through the 13th and we are hoping for her to bring back a win much like Plainville native Sarthwick Karnick did at the 2013 competition. 

Today's visit brings us on Good Friday, the Chrstian holiday which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and is part of the holiest week in the Christian faith which ends with the celebration of Easter on Sunday. Today is also the start of Passover in the Jewish faith. Passover is an-eight day festival that commemorates the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. 

Today's visit also marks the anniversary of many geographically significant events in  history, such as:
In 1860: The Pony Express debuts giving way to the modern era of mail delivery
In 1865: The Confederate capital Richmond was captured by the Union in the Civil War
In 1948: President Harry Truman signed the Foreign Assistance Act, aka the Marshall Plan, that provided $12 million in aid to the countries in Western Europe to assist in their economic recovery after World War II
In 1974: 148 tornadoes hit the heartland of the United States within a 16 hour period, affecting 11 states and Ontario, Canada

If you would like to learn more about the events of April 3rd and any other day in history, fun facts can be found on the History Channel's Website, "This Day in History". April 3rd certainly is a busy day in history!