General Interest
While many writers have to wait decades, if not centuries, after their death to receive critical or commercial success, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was lucky to achieve both during his lifetime. Born in Portland, Maine in 1807, he was a figure of national prominence by the 1850s, and a much-beloved professor at Harvard. Recently, the Maine Historical Society created this fine tribute to the man and his work. The site is divided into seven primary sections which include an extended biographical essay about his life and work, information about his family and his homes in Portland and Cambridge. Of course, any site about Longfellow would be incomplete without a generous selection of his poems, and this site has that particular detail well covered. In the Longfellow poems database, visitors can view a sortable list of his works, which can be arranged by poem title, first line, and publication date. [KMG]
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/volcano/volcano-home.html
With a dramatic geological flourish, the cover of the music for the 1890 song, “Alice’s reverie” features an exploding volcano. Interestingly enough, the volcano is not spewing forth lava or ash, but rather what appears to be sheet music, direct to the waiting hands of delighted onlookers. This sheet music for this tune, along with 9000 others, can be found at this website, which was created by the Library of Congress. Culled from their prodigious collection, the majority of these items are for voice and piano, but a sizable number are instrumental. Most of the songs are from the years 1850 to 1920, and visitors can perform simple searches to look for any items of interest. There are a few highlights that are worth looking up here, including early works by Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Additionally, the site includes a finding aid. [KMG]
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/Arts/subcollections/SuzukiAbout.shtml
Dr. Shin’ichi Suzuki developed the Suzuki method of violin instruction in Japan shortly after World War II. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) is home to the American Suzuki Institute, founded in 1971 by UWSP professor of violin, Margery V. Aber, who was an admirer of Suzki's teaching method. This digital collection presents moving image footage recorded in 1976, when Suzuki spent two weeks at the American Suzuki Institute, giving lectures and demonstrations, as well as teaching both master classes and group classes. A search on the site for Suzuki will retrieve 35 videos in an easily browsed list. Additional instructions for searching by topic are given in the introductory essay, and it is also possible to search by the titles of musical compositions. For example, a keyword search on twinkle yields 5 recordings of Suzuki's students playing “Twinkle, twinkle little star” or other Twinkle variations. [DS]
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mammography.html
MedLine Plus has been bringing helpful medical and health information to the web-browsing public for over a decade, and they have always been committed to providing information for educators as well. As one of their more specialized sections, the mammography site contains information on how to perform mammograms, including several interactive tutorials. First-time visitors will want look at the “Contents of this page” area, which allows them to move directly to sections such as “Clinical Trials”, “Research”, “Pictures/Diagrams”, and “Overviews”. One nice touch is that the site draws on materials culled from a number of high-quality sources, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Women’s Health Information Center, and the American Cancer Society. Two other resources here that are worth special mention are the Atlas of the Body (provided by the American Medical Association) and the multilingual mammogram tutorials offered in Chinese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. [KMG]
MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative has garnered favorable mentions from educators around the world since its inception several years ago, and new material is added to the site every semester. One recent addition to the site was this particular set of materials for an introductory course on electronics. Under the direction of Professors Manos Chaniotakis and David Cory, this course is designed as a “practical-hands on-introduction to electronics with a focus on measurement and signals.” Included on this site are a set of lecture notes, laboratory assignments, review notes, and practice exams. While students from around the world could definitely benefit from this material directly, educators could also peruse this material in an effort to gain some sense of how they might structure their own course. [KMG]
http://radiology.yale.edu/education/resources.html#dept
Like many health-care related fields, the area of diagnostic radiology is growing rapidly, and a number of educational institutions and professional organizations have been working on creating online resources to help those entering the field. The Department of Diagnostic Radiology at Yale University has created this resource, which functions as a thorough listing of web-based materials. Upon arriving at the site, visitors can scroll through a list of thematic materials, including radiology sites, departmental resources, and teaching file and image sites. Educators working in the field will find the teaching file sites particularly useful, as they include links to materials that can be used in the classroom. Additionally, educators may want to give this site to their students, as they can also make good use of it. [KMG]
Once upon a time, demonstrating the appearance of different diseases and conditions to aspiring members of the various medical professions required an actual human being. While there is still no substitute for learning rounds and first-hand observations, still images, photographs, and videos can be quite effective learning tools in this area. This particular online resource, created by the National Eye Institute, features hundreds of images of different eye diseases and related items. The items here are divided into a number of different sections, including research and education, eye photos and images, and new images. The site is well suited for educators, as a number of the smaller sections include simulations of various eye diseases, along with a series of in-class exercises. [KMG]
Living and coping with depression or bipolar disorder can be difficult, but there are a number of high-quality online resources that can be very useful to those with these conditions, or for those who work directly with these individuals. The homepage of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) can be of great help in this area, as their site includes everything from their “Real Recovery” podcasts to such basics as factsheets on both diseases. A good place to start here would be with any of the five primary sections, which include crisis intervention resources and recovery steps. Visitors can also view many of these materials in Spanish and they may also wish to sign up to receive the DBSA’s electronic newsletter. [KMG]
