YORKVILLE — Sitting in the darkness of their science room during a recent school day, fifth graders at the Caedmon School watched as clouds swept across a large, glowing globe.
With a click of a mouse, the globe displayed the earth's myriad temperatures, its populations, or what it would look like if it were drained of its oceans.
This school year, Caedmon School, at 416 E. 80th St., introduced its newest teaching tool, Magic Planet, a 24-inch digital projection globe, or sphere-shaped screen, that brings the traditional globe to life.
The Magic Planet globe — manufactured by the California-based tech company Global Imagination — can project any kind of program onto its screen, from different earth biomes to animal habitats, population density, and even global warming effects, energy use, and light pollution, according to Nolan Crohn, the school's science teacher.
"Now we have unlimited globes in the classroom," he recently told DNAinfo New York. "Whatever we're doing in class there is some way we can use it."
The pre-K to fifth grade students have all been introduced to the Magic Planet globe through their various studies — younger students have brushed up on their spatial awareness, seeing the world as an interconnected globe instead of a flat map.
And older students have been learning about plate tectonics, the locations of earth's deserts, tundra and plains, and have had a close look at a projection of global warming effects. They have even visited other planets, like mars.
"We get to see a unique perspective of the world that we usually couldn't get," fifth grader Ryan Singer said during his science class with Crohn.
His classmate, Edward Marquez-Miles, said that the new perspective gives him a better understanding of how the world actually works.
"There's only one ocean because they all connect to each other," he said. "It's really cool that I get to see the world like this."
Zoe Kress, another fifth grader, said the globe lets her see the world outside of their own. "We're able to see where other people live and how much energy they're using and polluting," she said.
Eventually, teachers hope to teach students how to create their own map projections.
Several air and space museums, aquariums, zoos, museums, and science centers across the world use Magic Planet globes.
Caedmon's globe was was donated by Mary Yellen, whose child attends the school. While the school didn't immediately discuss the price of the globe or the subscription software, pricing for the globe ranges from $270 per month to $790 per month, depending on how many students use it.
When it was set up in the dining hall during lunch at the end of the school year this summer, the students were as wowed by it as they might be by a display at Disneyland, according to Matthew Stuart, the head of Montessori-inspired school.
"They stopped talking in lunch," he said. "The idea at Caedmon is to give children an elementary experience that will turn them on to school for rest of their lives. In this case, the globe was such a clear way."
Caedmon School allows students to lead their own learning, giving them the independence to learn in the way that best suits them. The globe is in line with that methodology because it gives students the opportunity to explore and eventually create their own maps.
"Education right now is on fire. It's an exciting and moving target and we're gaining so much information about the way the brain works and technological possibilities," Stuart added.
"We didn't have an actual representation of water currents, plate tectonics, astronomy, for us as kids. We had a flat picture of a round earth. The ability to use this globe really cements their brains with what they're learning, which is incredible."
The globe has been such a hit and a great teaching tool that they have a second, smaller one on order, he said.
