Hi, I’m a biological oceanographer by training and most of my research is focused on zooplankton, the little tiny animals in the ocean. Much of my work is done in the Arctic. Two years ago, I was working in the Beaufort Sea and I had the opportunity to develop an education and outreach program. While I was trying to think of what to develop I thought about my feeling, Knowledge and impressions of the arctic and I thought about what people say when they hear I am traveling there. This ranges from wonder and excitement to pity. While I can tell people about the light in the arctic at midnight in the summer or blue twilight at noon in the winter or the golden glow in the fall, it’s hard to understand unless you see it. I wanted to develop a program that would let people see the arctic and give children a chance to learn about polar regions and how they are similar and different to other regions. In seeing this, the children would begin to see and learn about the connections between regions. With this in mind, my husband Jim Rich and I developed the Windows Around the World program (www.WindowsAroundTheWorld.org ), that lets children, teachers, parents and anyone come and see what it looks like in different areas.

This program is designed for elementary students and there are now five participating schools in the program. The web cameras at the schools look out the window and let the children see the different places. We take pictures with the cameras and use them as data, so that we can see how daylight, ground cover, light quality change over the year. When you line up all the images, for a month or year it looks like a quilt with the golds, blues, greens, etc for the sky and ground. It’s been alot of fun to work with the program. We just added a new feature that lets you see timelapse movies, to really see how a day or year changes. Seeing the arctic over a whole year has really helped the children and teachers to learn about it. Through this program we are creating a visual database of the region and whether you live in the south or the north seeing the rapid changes in light has a big impact. It’s hard to explain in words, the comments and feelings I’ve gotten from students. I invite you to come and see the site and images.

-- JuanitaUrbanRich