Franklin Matters

Monday, April 27, 2020

U.S. Geological Survey introduces "Learning From Home" portal

The U.S. Geological Survey Youth and Education in Science (YES) Team has revamped their web presence to better assist with online and home learning.

Check the new USGS Learning From Home portal for weekly lesson plans and activities, grades K – 12.

Students of all ages can always tap into the USGS Resources for Teachers for over 140 years of USGS research in the natural sciences in the form of lesson plans and activities, maps, podcasts, online lectures, videos and animations, and much more. Browse thousands of ideas for using these resources in elementary, secondary, university, and informal education settings.

USGS Learning From Home portal

https://www.usgs.gov/science-support/osqi/yes/resources-teachers/learning-home

USGS Resources for Teachers

https://www.usgs.gov/science-support/osqi/yes/resources-teachers/

https://edits.nationalmap.gov/tnmcorps/

FHS Senior Boys Hockey video

"We are thinking of our Seniors. Here is an awesome video celebrating them. Thank you for your unwavering commitment to the program, our school and our town."

"Special thanks to Tina Connelly for putting this video together!"

https://youtu.be/7fksBTRVLdI

Shared from Twitter
https://twitter.com/FHSPantherHocke/status/1254430043914285058?s=09

Ali Brigham named one of the 2020 Red Auerbach Massachusetts Basketball Players of the Year

Another award for FHS' Ali Brigham

MBCA Girls’ All-Sectional Team. This list includes our Regional Players Of the year:
Makayla Graves (North)
Ali Brigham (South)
Belle Lanpher (Central)
Nora Young (West) pic.twitter.com/K5PD0qMS18
— MBCA (@mbcaorg) April 21, 2020

The MBCA is also proud to present the 2020 Red Auerbach Massachusetts Basketball Players of the Year: Ali Brigham (Franklin High School) and John West (Shrewsbury High School). @FHSSports @ColonialsAD
— MBCA (@mbcaorg) April 21, 2020

Shared via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/fhsgjvlax/status/1254474332132315136?s=09

MBCA names Ali Brigham one of the 2020 Red Auerbach MA Basketball Players of the Year

“A huge piece of art is not just the creating process, but also the sharing process”

Great article in Edutopia featuring our own Ms. Doherty!

"Can the Arts Go Digital?

Christine Doherty, an elementary art teacher in Franklin, Massachusetts, said she had always shied away from using technology but realized she would have to embrace it to connect to all 540 of her students at two different schools during school closures.

Doherty created a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsK1QTSOSHu3NiSAwDvYGtQ) where she reads books to her students or leads them through easy art activities such as drawing and coloring.

She quickly found that online platforms allow students to continue sharing and talking about their artwork, just as they would in school. During her live video instruction time, students can type an H, for hand, into the chat box to indicate they want to share their work and place it up to the screen for other students to see. “A huge piece of art is not just the creating process, but also the sharing process,” she said."

Read the full article onlinehttps://www.edutopia.org/article/show-must-go-online-arts-teachers-adapt-home-instruction

Huge thank you to ⁦@lauraelee⁩ and @Edutopia for publishing this article featuring the hard work, effort & creativity of fellow arts educators during the school closures! I am so honored to be featured and represent ⁦⁦⁦@FranklinPSart⁩ https://t.co/Wet0edRP3O
— Christine Doherty (@MsDoherty_ART) April 24, 2020

Christine Doherty @MsDoherty_ART

NY Times: "The Untold Story of the Birth of Social Distancing"

From the New York Times we find this long read but good background information on where 'social distancing' came from.

"Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated like a piñata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic.

When they presented their plan not long after, it was met with skepticism and a degree of ridicule by senior officials, who like others in the United States had grown accustomed to relying on the pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new treatments, to confront evolving health challenges.

Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were proposing instead that Americans in some places might have to turn back to an approach, self-isolation, first widely employed in the Middle Ages.

How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html

Shared earlier in this pandemic period but a great visual on how social distancing works. YouTube Link = https://youtu.be/o4PnSYAqQHU

MBTA: Starting Saturday, May 2: Franklin Line no longer uses shuttle bus

"The installation of PTC has been completed on the Franklin Line. Normal weekend train service will resume on Saturday, May 2."

Last Updated: Apr 27 2020 04:30 AM
https://mbta.com/schedules/CR-Franklin/alerts

For more about Positive Train Control (PTC)
https://mbta.com/projects/commuter-rail-positive-train-control-ptc

"Normal weekend service" really means it is under the 'new normal' reduced service of the pandemic. https://mbta.com/covid19

MBTA: Starting Saturday, May 2: Franklin Line no longer uses shuttle bus

Boston Globe: Contact tracing background; high school 'lost year'?

From the Boston Globe, articles of interest to Franklin:

Contact tracing background

"Dr. Emily Wroe started working for Boston-based Partners in Health, the renowned global health nonprofit, while still a Harvard medical student. She worked with the government of Rwanda to build a modern hospital in the country’s poor northern region, perched on a terraced hilltop surrounded by subsistence farms. Later, in Malawi, she treated patients with tuberculosis and HIV, working with community health workers to track down sick patients by foot and, sometimes, motorbike.

Now she’s building a new squad of public health workers. Only this one is based in Massachusetts and it’s a virtual one, 1,000-people strong. Their mission is to track down every person in the state who comes in close contact with an infected person and help them isolate, thereby slowing the spread of the deadly virus.

And this time, the tracking will be done by telephone.

Wroe is part of the Partners in Health team charged with creating the state’s ambitious contact tracing program, which Governor Charlie Baker announced earlier this month. The administration, which has allotted $44 million to the program, sees contact tracing as a key piece of its plan to eventually open the economy up and allow people to venture out again, without fear of infection."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/25/metro/way-out-inside-ambitious-mass-coronavirus-contact-tracing-effort/

Hard, maybe cruel even, but better a 'lost year' than losing 'a life'

"Catari Giglio did everything she could to make the senior prom at Fenway High School picture perfect. She had the elegant gown, the handsome date; she had even designed the tickets for the big event.

Vivian Santos-Smith had a lead role in Somerville High School’s production of “As You Like It.” As winter turned to spring, and set and costumes came together, she spent hours memorizing her famous speech, the one that begins “All the world’s a stage …”

Mairead Baker, valedictorian at Boston Latin Academy, was writing the graduation speech that she would deliver to hundreds of beaming teachers and families, reflecting on the hard lessons of her past.

Like 80,000 other high school seniors across Massachusetts who learned this week that their schools will remain closed through June, they know their personal disappointments are a small price to pay to help end a global pandemic. But for young people whose lives have been defined by school since the age of 5 — who were on a path to high school graduation before they knew the word “commencement” — it was a stunning reversal of fortune, their most assured milestones disappearing in an instant."