Research and Education
http://www.exploratorium.edu/listen/index.php
This very detailed and well-thought out set of online activities gives users the opportunity to listen closely to the particular sounds of the natural world. Based at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this site was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The site is divided into three sections: “At the Museum”, “Listening Guides”, and “Online Activities”. While the first section is intended for those who will make a trip to the Exploratorium, far-distant (and not-so-distant) users will find the other two sections the most helpful. “Listening Guides” includes testimonies and suggestions about listening to wildlife, urban environments, and even to build new experimental musical instruments. Users can learn about Bart Hopkin, who makes such instruments, and also play a number of online games. Finally, the “Online Activities” area lets users watch and listen to a number of fun and interactive features, such as a listening memory game. [KMG]
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20061017_exurbia.pdf
In the early 1990s the journalist and social commentator Joel Garreau coined the term “edge cities” to refer to the growing quasi-urban places that were centered around major suburban freeway interchanges. Some fifteen years later, more and more scholars are interested in the movement towards exurban areas, which in many cases, are further distant than many edge cities. Recently, a team of scholars at The Brookings Institution decided to write a rather compelling report on these fast-growing communities, and this work represents their current thoughts and observations. In this 48-page paper published in October 2006, they present a number of interesting findings based on demographic and economic data from 1990 to 2005. Their findings include a number of geographically informed analyses, such as the fact that the South and Midwest are more exurbanized than the West and Northeast and the residents of the “average” exurb are disproportionately white, middle-income commuters. [KMG]
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/
While it never really left us, immigration has once again emerged as a central issue for many Americans. For a first-hand look at the history of immigration in the United States from the years 1789 to 1930, this website is quite a pip. Created as part of the Open Collections Program at Harvard University, this online archive includes approximately 1,800 books, 6,000 photographs, and 200 maps. Just to give visitors some sense of what is included here, they will be able to browse through the records of the Immigration Restriction League and take a gander at images Harvard’s Social Museum, which was established in 1903 to illustrate “problems of the social order.” Of course, given this bounty of primary documents, visitors will also want to make use of the keyword search feature and a rather nice timeline. [KMG]
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/digital/digitalumass.htm
Founded in 1863, the University of Massachusetts combines both the applied sciences and disciplines with such traditional liberal arts standards as philosophy, history, and rhetoric. Over the past few years, in keeping with their mission to provide the public with access to their holdings, their library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives has created some fine digital collections. One such collection is the Digital UMass Archive, which brings together a number of primary materials that relate to the history of the institution. Visitors to the site can look through the annual reports from 1864 to 1932, browse through issues of an early student newspaper, and also peruse a few student handbooks from the early 20th century. For anyone interested in the history of higher education in the United States, this website is quite a find. [KMG]
Dr. John van Wyhe certainly has his hands full with this tremendously helpful and compelling website. As a professor at Cambridge University, he has been behind the scenes here for a number of years, and even persons with only a cursory interest in the work of Charles Darwin will find that this site warrants several visits. As noted by the site’s introduction, visitors can find all of Darwin’s publications here in their entirety, for a current total of over 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. Casual visitors can look over a complete list of the materials by clicking on the “Contents” section, and scholars may want to leap on over to the very thorough bibliography, which is based on R.B. Freeman’s 1977 work, “The Works of Charles Darwin: An Annotated Bibliographical Handlist”. The site is rounded out by a biographical sketch of the prolific scientist and historian, also included are a number of obituaries of this most unique individual. [KMG]
http://www.whitman.edu/biology/vpd/main.html
Dissection can be an aspect of scientific education that can make some parties queasy, but it is a fascinating way to learn more about the different body systems, their operations, and basic animal anatomy. Entering the world of pig dissection can make budding scientists even more squeamish, but they need never fear, as this site allows these individuals the opportunity to engage in a bit of virtual pig dissection. Originally created by Professor Earl W. Fleck of Whitman College’s biology department, the site lets users go inside the pig to learn about its various systems, via a set of high-quality color photographs, which can be viewed at different angles and perspectives. Of course, what would a lab be without a quiz? Rounding out the site, visitors can take short quizzes on the pig’s anatomy and such. [KMG]
Developed by Dr. Abdelkader Dendane, a lecturer at the United Arab Emirates University, the Analyze Math website is designed to provide curious minds with access to in-depth tutorials on such topics as logarithmic functions, systems of linear equations, and calculus. The site also covers materials from the fields of trigonometry and the sometimes vexing field of statistics. Utilizing Java applets, the different sections allow for interactive explorations of these areas of interest, and visitors just need to scroll down through the homepage to find the subject they are having difficulty understanding. The site’s layout is fairly self-explanatory, and with the use of a projection device, materials from this site could be put to good use in the classroom. [KMG]
Spanish language instruction has been a staple of instruction in high schools and colleges for years, and there are a number of high-quality online resources for those who would like to learn the language, or just refresh their vocabulary. At this site, visitors can go through a number of tutorials that deal with basic pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Each tutorial contains an audio section that repeats phrases clearly so that users can learn at their leisure. One fun feature is the “Random Spanish Idiom Generator”, which at the mere click of a mouse will bring up phrases such as “En el momento preciso”, which means “In the nick of time”. The site also contains a list of ten phrases that don’t translate well into Spanish (such as “Look before you leap”) and a list of schools that offer personal Spanish-language instruction. [KMG]
