http://www.pbs.org/merrow/index.html

The Merrow Report, a PBS television program, features video documentaries about current issues in education for K-12 educators and the general public. On this program, "Veteran NewsHour education reporter John Merrow investigates education's headline-making issues, as well as those we don't hear about." From this website, visitors can read about past and upcoming programs, such as a NewsHour program on Women in Science, where Merrow goes inside an all-girls school in Cleveland, Ohio, "that is closing the science gender gap one student at a time," and a program called Declining by Degrees that explores the variation in American higher education institutions. Video footage and interactive websites are created for the more recent programs, while over 50 of earlier programs are available to download through Annenberg/CPB, which can be accessed from this website. [VF]

http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/

This document by Ken Polsson "is an attempt to bring various published sources together to present a timeline about Personal Computers." The author has posted this document online as he continues to work on a book project, for which he has browsed extensively through various sources for historical information related to personal computers. The document provides a brief summary of "the essential happenings that shaped the industry." The full text, which contains close to 3,000 entries, is available for purchase. This online document represents the start of the timeline "to show you the quality of the material" and begins in 1947 with the invention of the point-contact transistor amplifier by three scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories and ends in December, 1977 with a victory by Microsoft in an important legal battle against Pertec, on ownership of the BASIC software Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote and licensed to MITS. The references are listed in a separate file, which is also available online. [VF]

http://wiki.ehow.com/Main-Page

WikiHow is an exciting new "collaborative writing project aiming to build the world's largest how-to manual." Applying the wiki model of information collection (see also NSDL Scout Report for Mathematics, Engineering and Technology, November 5, 2004), wikiHow contains instructions on how to do thousands of things, all written by individuals in the wikiHow community. Anyone is invited to join the community by contributing a new page or editing a page that someone else started. The quality of the entries are improved over time as people make changes and remove "vandalism, nonsense, and material not fit for the wikiHow site." WikiHow is sustained by funds gained through "tasteful, non-obnoxious advertising on the website" and is powered by open source software created by the WikiMedia Foundation. Visitors can search the how-to articles or browse by topic, which range from auto repair to removing salt buildup on zipper. [VF]

http://www.abanet.org/tech/ltrc/survstat.html

The American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center is intended to help lawyers "solve the technology puzzle." They regularly conduct survey research assessing the use of technology in the legal community, including availability and usage of a wide range of general and legal-specific technologies. The full report for 2003 is available for purchase only, but the methodology and the executive summary can be downloaded free of charge. The 2004-2005 ABA Annual Technology Survey Report analysis will begin soon. Summaries of older Topical Surveys are also available to view. Some examples of these include: Feasibility and Viability of the Digital Library; Trends In Legal Publishing for the Millennium: Quality Moves to the Internet; and Wireless Network Adoption in Law Schools. [VF]

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte-v6n2/foster.jte-v6n2.html

Although published in the Journal of Technology Education in the Spring 1995 issue, this historical article is nevertheless timely. Available through Digital Library and Archives, University Libraries, Virginia Tech, the article reviews the history of the field of industrial arts, once known as "manual arts." The author highlights the similarities between the educational goals of industrial arts programs in the 1920s and modern technology education. He points to how today's technology education is not far off from the industrial arts philosophy, which was intended to be general education for boys and girls of all ages and grade levels. He then goes on to discuss the nature of that philosophy and to "demonstrate that industrial arts was originally intended to be part of the 'social studies.'" He concludes with a discussion of Why the Intentions Were Never Realized and some implications of this heritage for public school curriculum. [VF]

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050609_impact_camera.html

This article from Space.com describes how scientists from NASA’s Deep Impact mission intend to fix the spacecraft’s blurry vision problem by applying a mathematical process to the images after they have been transmitted to Earth. The author briefly descibes the process, called deconvolution, and discusses some challenges that the researchers will need to address. Readers can also learn more about the Deep Impact mission and its goal of learning about the makeup and nature of the mysterious nucleus of the comet Tempel 1. NASA’s Deep Impact mission was designed to uncover a comet’s innards by smashing a probe into Tempel 1. After being releases from the Flyby craft, the Impactor will position itself directly in front of the speeding comet for a head on collision. The impact is scheduled to occur at 1:52 a.m. EDT this July 4, 2005. [VF]

http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has initiated this history project in an effort to raise public awareness of "the extent to which every area of their life is intertwined with the communications technologies the FCC has responsibility to regulate." Aside from the commonly known FCC regulations regarding television and regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable, the FCC authorization rules also protect individuals when we use a variety of other electrical and electronic equipment. Previous exhibits, available still online, have focused on the technological history of television and the pioneers who developed radio's core technologies, which focus on public safety, business, and personal communication aspects of radio. The current exhibit highlights aspects of the more recent history of the Internet. Through these exhibits, "the FCC hopes to inform and, possibly, inspire with a few reminders of the great achievements that made television, radio and the Internet as we know them today possible." Additional resources available here include a history of Communications Laws; Early Government Documents About Telephone, Telegraph, and Broadcasting; and Radio Service Bulletins. [VF]

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD), sponsors the annual DARPA Grand Challenge (first reported on in the August 1, 2003, NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology), which is "a field test intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield." Individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D community, government, the armed services, academia, students, backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts are invited to enter the challenge. The news release posted on this website on June 6, 2005, announces the 40 semifinalists selected to advance to the National Qualification Event, which will be held September 27 through October 6, 2005 in Fontana, Calif. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that is the first to finish the designated route within 10 hours wins $2 million. When the race was first held in 2003, the most successful team managed to cover only 7.4 miles of the desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. A related website describing the Autonomous Vehicle Practice Facility of the US Department of Defense Joint Robotics Program (JRP) was still under construction at the time of this report. [VF]