General Interest
http://www.itvs.org/beyondthefire/
The experience of war is traumatic for all persons who happen to be involved in such activities, whether they be soldiers, commanders, or civilians who are caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. This interactive site tells the story of teenagers involved in various conflicts around the globe, and is maintained by the good people at the Independent Lens Organization. Upon reaching the site's homepage, visitors will be enticed by the multimedia portraits of such teenagers, including Naima Margan in Somalia and Shaima Abdul in Afghanistan. After listening to their stories, visitors may elect to offer feedback on the program, or read transcripts of the participants' comments. The features that educators will appreciate include an interactive world map, conflict timelines, and facts about each country. The site is also rounded out by a fine selection of links to outside Web-based resources, such as the World Fact Book and the homepage of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. [KMG]
Law students, lawyers, and the general public will find The Curiae Project, based at Yale University's Law School, to be immensely helpful. On the site visitors can view a list of featured arguments and briefs which rotate on the site's homepage on a regular basis. The project has also created a ranking index which ranks the most commonly cited Supreme Court decisions, largely based on a number of works on constitutional law. Not so surprisingly, some of these cases include Marbury v. Madison, Gibbons v. Ogden, and Plessy v. Ferguson. Additionally, visitors can examine a list of the most frequently viewed cases, which include Brown v. Board of Education, Baker v. Carr, and Lochner v. New York. The site also contains a search engine and a number of links to external resources of note. [KMG]
http://www.biographi.ca/EN/index.html
Provided by the online Library and Archives of Canada, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography site is a tremendously helpful source of brief and informative profiles of those personages of importance throughout Canadian history from the year 1000 to 1930. The print edition of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography's first volume was released in 1959 and was a collaborative research and publishing project between the University of Toronto and the Universite Laval. With a Flash-enabled search engine, visitors can search through the approximately 8,000 entries by topic, date range, or geography. Some of the persons profiled within these electronic pages include Claude Dablon, the noted 17th-century priest and missionary, and Arthur Vallee, the noted physician and asylum superintendent. The homepage of the site also has a "quick biography" search feature that will assist those persons who already know who they are looking for in the Dictionary. [KMG]
Founded in 1928 as the Future Farmers of America, The National FFA Organization is a youth organization that has almost half a million student members who are engaged in a wide range of agricultural education activities. The organization has over 7,000 chapters which concentrate on three primary areas: premier leadership, personal growth and career success. While 30 percent of its members come from farming communities, some 70 percent of FFA members are from rural non-farm, urban and suburban areas. On the homepage, visitors can learn about such events as National FFA Week, scholarship opportunities, and the organization's various conferences. For educators, the Educators Workroom will be a place that will be very helpful. Here they can learn about innovative teaching practices in agricultural education and also learn about various strategies for working with young people. [KMG]
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/catdept/digcol/ulmann/index.html
Born in New York City in 1882, Doris Ulmann was a graduate of the school of the Ethical Culture Society, a socially liberal organization that was know for championing individual worth regardless of ethnic background or economic condition. Over her life, Ulmann documented the rural people of the American South and also created a series of prominent intellectuals of the day, including John Dewey and Lewis Mumford. Recently, the University of Oregon Libraries created this fine digital collection that provides access to 1,800 of approximately 12,000 images from the Ulman Photograph Collection. Visitors to the site can browse the collection or perform advanced searches utilizing such fields as title, description, and photo date.
The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private non-profit organization comprised of scholars and educators "who use the findings of linguistics and related sciences in identifying and addressing language-related problems." The organization's homepage will be of great interest to educators and policy-makers alike, as it contains a number of very useful resources, lesson plans, and other materials. Visitors can begin their journey by clicking on one of the topic areas on the left-hand side of the screen. The topic areas include bilingual education, language testing, school reform, and refugee concerns.
