EI LIVE K12 Is Back for Spring 2021
Our popular video series for students, educators, and parents returns with an exciting lineup from January to June.
We are excited to announce the return of our popular EI LIVE K12 series, which will continue to provide educational content for K12 students, educators, and parents for the rest of the 2020-2021 academic year. The series will feature experts from across the Earth Institute in 45-minute live sessions where they will share aspects of their work through lectures and interactive activities.
The series will occur once a week beginning on January 14 until June 24 at 4:00pm ET, with a few exceptions, which are noted with an asterisk(*). All sessions are free but pre-registration is REQUIRED for each event. RSVP links, along with the schedule from January to June, are below. We will send a Zoom Webinar link to all registered participants prior to the start of the programming. All sessions will be recorded and hosted on the EI LIVE K12 page for easy accessibility.
Parents/Students: Each session has a specific age range, so please make a note of that.
Educators: We suggest tuning in for the sessions that correspond with the age groups that you teach, and where we are able to, we will share additional readings and resources.
Communicating Climate Change
Thursday, January 14, 3:00 – 3:45pm ET*
Presenter: Dale Willman, Associate Director, Resilience Media Project
Target audience: Grades 7-12
It’s hard enough getting people to listen when we talk about something simple, so how do we get them to listen when the fate of the world is at stake? Climate change threatens our very existence on the planet, but there are things we can do today that can make a real difference. You will learn about some of the tools available for communication, and how you can use them to bring about real change.
Climate Data — The Numbers Behind the Numbers
Thursday, January 21, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Dara Mendeloff, Senior Geographic Information Specialist, Center for International Earth Science Information Network
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Data science is growing up fast. Learn about the data science tools used in climate research by our scientists to understand geographic data, perform spatial analysis, and visualize data while communicating a story.
Antarctica Wildlife – Built for the Cold
Thursday, January 28, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Margie Turrin, Director of Educational Field Programs; Laurel Zaima, Education and Outreach Coordinator, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 3-5
What adaptations does a species need to survive in Antarctica? Students will learn how species use special teeth, interlocking feathers, projectile vomiting and very deep dives to protect themselves in this wild and unique environment. Students can create their own Antarctic glacier scene in advance and add additional species from this session.
Constructing Climate-Conscious Cities
Thursday, February 4, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Dannie Dinh, Program Officer and Deputy Country Lead for the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday) project, International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Target audience: Grades 6-8
Our climate is indeed changing, ultimately altering our world as we know it. Join this creative session to learn about the risks and challenges of climate change and what innovative ideas and solutions can help reduce or adapt to those impacts. Then brainstorm and draw what these ideas would look like in our own daily life and community. Together, we will imagine and sketch our future world in the face of a changing climate.
You Spin Me Right Round
Thursday, February 11, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Spencer Hill, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 6-12
Why do storms and ocean currents always seem to be spinning around or looping? How does Earth’s rotation (once every 24 hours) influence this? What about on other planets like Jupiter? In this session, we’ll use a rotating tank of water and some food coloring to create real-world models that bring these big, far-off swirling systems to your own desk or table.
Under the Sea — Corals and Climate Change
Thursday, February 18, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Brad Linsley, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Grades 3-6
This session will explore how coral skeletons can be used to generate seasonal (winter, spring, summer, fall) reconstructions of water temperature, rainfall and salinity (salt content) extending back hundreds of years. The longest coral sample scientists at Lamont have collected extends back to 1521 C.E! Students will get a close-up view of actual coral core samples that have been collected and will learn how they are sampled and analyzed in the lab to make these unique climate records.
Every Breath We Take
Thursday, February 25, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Garima Raheja, PhD Candidate, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Air quality and greenhouse gasses impact our health and our planet. We will learn about different pollutants in our air, and use data science to find out where they come from, where they go, and what happens along the way.
A History in Mud
Thursday, March 4, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Nichole Anest, Curator, Core Repository, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 1-5
The Lamont-Doherty Core Repository is home to one of the world’s largest collections of ocean floor samples called sediment cores. Why are 20,000 cores not enough? Join the curator, Nichole Anest, for a look inside this unique library and a hands on activity where we will explore what is in all that mud!
The Earth’s Blanket — Physics of Glaciers
Thursday, March 11, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Jonny Kingslake, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Target audience: Grades 11-12
Glaciers are large volumes of ice that accumulate in the world’s coldest regions. They are so large that they flow under their own weight like a fluid, affect global sea levels, and act like a thick insulating blanket on the Earth’s surface. This session will discuss how scientists use mathematics and physics to understand these processes and many others. We will introduce glaciers and how they work, then show you some simple equations that will help us understand how ice insulates the Earth’s surface. This session is more advanced. Some familiarity with glaciers, as well as with heat flow, algebra, and other high school physics concepts, will be useful but not required.
What’s Going to Happen to My Neighborhood?
Thursday, March 18, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Margie Turrin, Director of Educational Field Programs; Laurel Zaima, Education and Outreach Coordinator, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 6-12
Climate change impacts us all, but not all in the same way. Students will dig into the ‘National Climate Assessment Report’ and the ‘US Climate Resiliency Toolkit’ to explore data uncovering local impacts from global climate change and discuss opportunities for building a more resilient future.
How Global Climate Policy Works
Thursday, March 25, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Lisa Dale, Lecturer in Discipline, Undergraduate Major in Sustainable Development, Earth Institute
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Join us for this session as we explore climate change policy. With the U.S. expected to rejoin the Paris Agreement this year under a new administration, what will that mean for climate change policy in our country and globally? How do the climate policies around the world protect our planet and help us take action?
Thursday, April 1: No Session
Data Storytelling
Thursday, April 8, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Jackie Ratner, Senior Project Manager, National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Learn about the stages of creating a data story, how to source data, clean it, choose a visual or other format for your story, and how to tell a story effectively using data. The session will include a brief introduction into design fundamentals for data visualization.
Talking About the Weather — Crowdsourcing and Memories of Climate
Thursday, April 15, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenters: Max Mauerman, Staff Associate, and J. Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Target audience: Grades 6-12
Despite advances in measuring historical climate conditions with satellites and weather stations, scientific instruments do not always reflect what is happening on the ground. This is why it is important to verify sensor data with the communities who are directly affected by droughts, excess rain, and other hazards, in order to improve climate risk management. To address these issues, we present a mobile game, iKON, to gather accurate historical climate data from communities around the world. iKON uses behavioral science principles to elicit better responses, such as priming memory and incentivizing accuracy through a points-reward matching system. We will explain the importance of crowdsourcing for climate risk management and have fun playing our game during this session.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Climate
Monday, April 19, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET*
Presenter: Josh DeVincenzo, Senior Instructional Designer, National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Target audience: Grades 6-12
How do people think about climate change? What can we do to engage more people in the conversation or become better climate learners ourselves? Exciting research spanning psychology, communications, and education are looking into these very questions. During this session, students will be introduced to thinking about climate change as a system, the psychology of climate change as well as strategies to engage their communities in discussion and education about the impacts of climate change.
Tropical Tales of Polar Ice
Monday, April 26, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET*
Presenter: Jacky Austermann, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Target audience: Grades 6-12
Each rock tells a story. In this session, we will go on a virtual journey to the Bahamas and learn about what rocks and fossils on these Caribbean islands can tell us about past and future sea level change.
Lights, Camera, Robots: Exploring the Earth’s Final Frontiers
Thursday, May 6, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Vicki Ferrini, Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 3-8
Very little of the world’s ocean has been mapped or explored – it is Earth’s final frontier. Learn about how scientists and engineers explore, visualize, and study hard to reach underwater environments in an effort to unlock the mysteries of the deep.
A World of Change: Ice and Ocean Interactions in Antarctica
Thursday, May 13, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Frank Nitsche, Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 6-8
There are reports in the news that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting. But why and how is it melting? In this session, we will learn about interaction of ice and ocean water around Antarctica, the main driver of melting today. We will talk about how and where warm ocean water is getting to the ice and melting it, how we observe and measure ocean water and how it is making it to the ice.
Make ‘n Break Ice
Thursday, May 20, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Christine McCarthy, Lamont Associate Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 1-5
Did you know that ice can be found throughout the solar system? In my lab we make ice samples like those found on Earth and other moons and planets. We also use machines to squish, break, slide and even ‘tickle’ samples to recreate all the forces that they may experience on different worlds, and then we record how they respond. We will talk about some of my favorite icy moons and see all the cool tools we use in the lab.
Rock You Like a Hurricane
Thursday, May 27, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Chia-Ying Lee, Lamont Assistant Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Join us for a session about hurricanes and what’s happening to them in an age of climate change. Learners will get a basic understanding of how hurricanes form, develop, grow, and change, as well as what scientists know (and don’t know) about the 2021 hurricane season.
There Goes that Boom Boom Pow!
Thursday, June 3, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Nicholas Frearson, Senior Staff Associate, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 9-12
Volcanic eruptions are one of the most powerful natural phenomena that we can witness today. When Vesuvius erupted, it sent superheated clouds of ash and molten rock over 20 miles up into the atmosphere. Today, it is still a challenge when volcanoes close to human habitation erupt without warning, as was evidenced by the eruption of Taal Volcano in the Philippines in January 2020. So to try and solve this problem, scientists are developing an early warning system to predict volcanic eruptions. They are doing so by installing arrays of state-of-the-art sensors on Cleveland, an active volcano in the Aleutian Islands, and beaming live data back from it to our labs in New York. Join us for this session to learn how scientists are analyzing volcanic data in real time to identify patterns that will help them anticipate future eruptions.
The Ice That Made Manhattan
Thursday, June 10, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Michael Kaplan, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audiences: Grades 6-12
During the last Ice Age, a large ice sheet covered much of New York City. During this session, students will learn the clues that we look for to know that the New York City region was covered by an ice sheet, or the evidence that was left behind across the surrounding area.
Grow Your Green Thumb
Thursday, June 17, 4:00 – 4:45pm ET
Presenter: Alex Root, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Target audience: Grades 3-6
In this workshop participants are invited to bring two plants or cut flowers for an observation, sketching, and journaling session. We will share and discuss the beautiful forms and functions of plants. The workshop will conclude with activities to grow plants at home from vegetables, tips for going green, and the importance of plants in our lives.
Wind Beneath Our Wings
Thursday, June 24, 4:00 – 5:00pm ET
Presenter: Jackie Ratner, Senior Project Manager, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, and special guests from Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd)
Target audience: Grades 6-9
In this session, students will learn about how wind is created on Earth, and how we can use it to do important work like grinding grain, moving ships, pumping water, and generating electricity from a STEM professional. A panel of guests from Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd), a utility company that provides electric service to more than 4 million customers across northern Illinois, will present during this session. In addition to learning about wind energy, participants will also hear about what it’s like to work in the STEM field.