Research and Education
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~hfrp/
Started in 1983 by Dr. Heather B. Weiss, the Harvard Family Research Project "strives to increase the effectiveness of public and private organizations and communities as they promote child development, student achievement, healthy family functioning, and community development." From the site, visitors can browse around and learn about their primary research activities, browse through the publication list (many of which are made available online), and learn about FINE, or the Family Involvement Network of Educators. The publications may be browsed by subject, title, or author, and visitors may also sign up to receive a free publications brochure on the site. Guests to the site will also want to review HFRP's newsletter, The Evaluation Exchange, as it provides a range of evaluation information and research, along with providing a forum for dialogue among policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders. [KMG]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/
While it's hard to have a thorough and well-developed perspective at times on events in the recent past, this thought-provoking online site on the recent war in Iraq is a place that brings together important analysis from a host of war correspondents, policymakers, and military leaders. The site includes transcriptions of interviews with various persons involved in the recent military conflict, a chronology of events during (and leading up to) the war, and a very good section of analysis, divided into thematic topics that include civilian casualties and one titled Is this Victory?. Of course, visitors will not want to leave the site without looking at the many fine extra features, such as a transcript of a talk with Eamonn Matthews (the program's producer), a very thorough set of materials for teachers, reaction from the press on the program, and a video excerpt. [KMG]
Created by the good people at the Science Museum of Minnesota (with generous support from the National Science Foundation) the Robots and Us website is an interactive and multi-sensory educational teaching tool that helps young people learn about the ways in which robots (and humans) move, think, and exist throughout the process of experiencing the world. Visitors will start out their journey in the virtual Low Life Labs, where they can proceed to the main activities directly or get help. Upon entering the main activities area, visitors may move to one of the four main labs: Moving, Sensing, Thinking, or Being. Each area contains a series of activities for visitors, along with a brief description of the concept and idea that each activity is actively exploring. The Sensing section is quite good, as it contains a number of interesting and intelligent activities, such as CAPTCHA, which allows individuals to try out examples of programs that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass, but current programs can't. [KMG]
http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/flor00.html
The term florilegium refers to a compilation of excerpts from other writings, and is used on this website to refer to this ongoing online project, developed by Stephen Alsford, which provides "a considered selection of primary source texts illustrative of various aspects of medieval urban life, and to present those texts in modern English." The introduction to the site provides detailed information on the impetus for creating such an archive, and also offers some commentary on the editing conventions used during the process of translating various primary documents into modern English and so on. The site is divided into four primary sections, including ones dealing specifically with the community and government aspects of medieval urbanism. While several of the subsections of each main area are currently under development, various subsections have very fine essays authored by Alsford himself. As visitors begin to peruse these primary documents offered in translation they will begin to see perhaps more similarities with contemporary urbanism than they previously may have thought existed. New visitors to the site may want to start out by looking at a couple of documents in particular, such as the will of a wealthy merchant from Norfolk from 1339 (located in the Death subsection under the Lifecycle area) or the charter granted to London by Henry I, located in the Government section. [KMG]
http://www.abc.net.au/countusin/default.htm
Developed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Online division, this interactive site contains age-appropriate and visually-appealing games designed to help young people understand basic number concepts. There are fifteen games in total, all of which may be downloaded for use in the classroom or at home, at no charge. Some of the games include activities that allow students to design patterns using objects contained with a bookshelf or the ever-popular sheep counting game, where participants must move sheep from left to right until there are the same number of sheep in each paddock. Additionally, there is a section that explains the purpose of each game, and a help feature within each game that helps users become acclimated to the goal of each activity. The site is rounded out by a selection of teacher resources designed to complement each game on the site. [KMG]
GeoWeb is part of SRI International's DARPA-sponsored Digital Earth Project. Drawing from search engines like Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, or TerraServer, the GeoWeb is "a vision for making all geographically referenced, or georeferenced, data available over the Web." The infrastructure allows for open, global, and scalable Internet searches associated with a specific latitude/longitude location. Clients can query the GeoWeb to "discover relevant metadata and use Web-based or peer-to-peer communications to retrieve the actual data." The data can be used, for example, with Internet-connected cell phones and car navigation systems. The website describes the project goals and work on building the standards, tools, browsers, and infrastructure necessary to develop GeoWeb. [VF] This site is also reviewed in the April 23, 2004 NSDL MET Report.
Henry David Thoreau is widely considered one of the most important persons in the history of American letters in addition to an international reputation as a naturalist, philosopher, and author. This particular website serves as both a source of information about the authorized Thoreau Edition of his complete works (which was founded in 1966) and the Thoreau Project, which is located at Northern Illinois University, and which is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. On the site, visitors can learn about the life and times of Thoreau, read a series of reflections on his book, Walden, and learn about future volumes in the Thoreau Edition. The section dedicated to Thoreau's various writings is quite delightful, as visitors can view original samples of his handwriting, peruse selections from his celebrated journal (which he kept from 1837 to 1861), and view a complete list of his letters, which he composed from 1835 to 1862. [KMG]
There are numerous scientific endeavors funded by national governments and other interested organizations around the world, many of which have hundreds of persons in their employ. Of course there are some equally worthwhile projects out there bringing science to a broad audience, and the AuroraWebCam project has a staff of two bringing live broadcasts of the auroras from Alaska. The project is the brainchild of Troy Birdsall, a young man from Fairbanks, who is ably assisted by Stachu Stryzewski from Poland. From the homepage, visitors can view a live webcam broadcast from Ft. Aurora in Alaska from the hours of 4:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Alaska time). If visitors can't tune in that time, they may also elect to view archived videos of auroras which are also located on the site, or browse through one of the many photo galleries. Finally, the site also has a nice forum section where visitors can post questions or offer feedback to the team working on this compelling site. [KMG]
