The Scout Report -- Volume 22, Number 18

Lou Henry Hoover may be best known for serving as the nation's first lady from 1929 to 1933, however, she was also a talented linguist who made regular appearances on the newly minted nationwide radio broadcast system and was the first - and only - first lady to speak fluent Mandarin. In this collection from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, readers may view a portrait of Lou Henry Hoover taken in 1929. They may also view portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln, Grace Coolidge, Martha Washington, Michelle Obama, and 39 other first ladies. Each image is accompanied by informative text about the artist or photographer who created the portrait, the year the portrait was made, the dimensions of the original, and other fascinating details. For educators looking for ways to bring to life the first ladies of the United States, this will be an excellent resource. [CNH]

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The Oregon Department of Education has assembled this curriculum resource guide to assist elementary school educators teach about the transmission and prevention of HIV. In the introduction, the authors recommend that schools form an HIV Prevention Education Advisory Committee. From there, the nearly 200 page guide is divided into grade-level appropriate content for students, from kindergarten up to fifth grade. For example, one lesson for a kindergarten class begins by teaching children ways to control infections, such as washing hands before meals, covering the mouth when sneezing, and staying at home when sick. Another lesson teaches kids to properly and safely care for an injury. In all, this book-length treatise includes a wealth of information for educators tasked with teaching students about the scientific and social strategies to help prevent HIV and other communicable diseases. [CNH]

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Between 1942 and 1945, thousands of Japanese Americans - regardless of citizenship - were evacuated from their homes and relocated to interment camps across the country, by order of the U.S. Government. This lesson is part of the Teaching with Documents series at the National Archives and offers educators many helpful tools to teach about Executive Order 9066 and the lived experience of Japanese relocation during WWII. Resources include nearly two dozen primary documents, photographs, letters, and other ephemera that may be used to engage students in critical analysis. For instance, one teaching activity of note encourages students to make connections to the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, while a vivid photograph of teenagers standing on the High School Campus at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, reveals what daily life might have been like in the camps. [CNH]

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These special programs, which aired on C-SPAN for 90 minutes each night between March 28 and April 9, 2016, bring to life the drama that accompanied some of the most important Supreme Court decisions in American history. Nearly everyone has heard of Brown V. Board of Education, for instance, or Roe V. Wade, but how much does the average student or casual history buff know about 1905's Lochner V. New York, which in overturning a New York law that limited the number of hours a baker could work each week presaged the current "Right to Work" legislation now making its way through state courts. Landmark Cases also unearths the controversies surrounding such influential decisions as Scott V. Sandford (1857), Marbury V. Madison (1803) and Baker V. Carr (1962), among others. Educators looking for ways to liven up their civics lessons will find much to appreciate in these well produced episodes, in which C-SPAN journalists interview historians and other experts in the field of Supreme Court law. [CNH]

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These interactives from the popular PBS science show, NOVA, can get students involved in a wide range of topics, from Anthropology to Technology. Readers may like to scout the site by Interest, which includes such categories as Biology, Chemistry, Disasters, Earth, Exploration, Flight, and half a dozen others. Particular highlights include the Stone Age Toolkit, in which students examine the tools and weapons that humans began to fashion approximately 40,000 years ago, and Design a Parachute, where readers can use the interactive to design a custom-made parachute to help the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity land safely on the Red Planet. Social Studies, Language Arts, Social Sciences, Biology, and Chemistry teachers will all find excellent material for their classrooms on this PBS-sponsored website. [CNH]

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The University of Cincinnati Master of Education Online program has assembled an excellent cache of Curriculum and Instruction Resources that can be used by teachers and teacher educators anywhere. There are 10 resources here to be explored, covering two broad categories: Technology & Classroom Resources and Professional Associations & Policy Reform. In the first section, readers may like to start with 4Teachers.org, a site dedicated to helping educators integrate technology into their lesson plans. Or they may like to link to Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE), a Department of Education site that is veritably bursting with free teacher resources, organized by subject. ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), which is often described as the most comprehensive database of education literature on the internet, is also featured here. Whatever subject educators are teaching, there is much to dazzle them in this collection. [CNH]

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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is one of the great repositories of information about American history and culture. The Americas to 1620 exhibit, featured here, explores the world of North America, beginning with the settlements that began between 20,000 BCE and 9,500 BCE. From there, readers may use the interactive timeline to learn about the Hopewell Culture, which flourished in east-central North America between 200 BCE and AD 500, the great Hohokam and Anasazi cultures of the southwest, the Mississippian Culture that flourished through the 1500s, or the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico, among others. In addition to an excellent timeline, readers will find pithy explanations of lands and peoples, and wonderfully evocative visual images that bring to life the pre-European history of the Americas. [CNH]

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MIT BLOSSOMS offers video lessons to enrich the experience of high school students studying a variety of subjects. In addition to the dozens of videos housed in the BLOSSOMS Video Library, readers will also find an excellent assortment of Physics Resources on this page. Here educators and students will find links to enlivening material from around the web. For example Newton's Laws of Motion and Car Physics, takes readers step-by-step through Sir Isaac Newton's revered construction of the three laws of motion. Or, readers might be interested in the 2,000+ physics lesson plans on Share My Lesson. Other links take readers to an interactive dedicated to understanding particles, a site that examines the practical applications of physics, and the University of Colorado's PhET interactive, where students may interface with simulations in physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. From the resources on this list, educators and students alike are sure to find a great fit for their next physics adventure. [CNH]

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Launched in the fall of 2011, Little Fiction began as a small online journal dedicated to publishing high quality fiction from relatively unknown writers. It quickly grew, adding Big Truths, a section dedicated to non-fiction writing. Readers may like to scroll through the latest stories, which are featured on the homepage, before delving into the Fiction or Nonfiction tabs, depending on proclivities or mood. Recent essays have examined the slippery nature of memory and the pains of lost love. Short stories have addressed themes ranging from survival in the Arctic wild to the intricacies and intimacies of a long marriage. Whatever a reader's preferences, this beautifully designed site will offer hours of heartfelt and illuminating stories. [CNH]

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Izabella Laba is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia, where she researches harmonic analysis, geometric measure theory, and additive combinatorics. Thankfully, she also writes an excellent, readable blog, where the rest of us can peruse her thoughts on mathematics, gender, the academy, and whatever else happens to be on her unusually brilliant mind on any given day. Recent posts have taken on the dirty politics inherent to website comments sections, engaged a debate over social science terminology as applied to the examination of gender in the math community, and thought through how the internet and mass communications might impact the field of academic mathematics. While some of these articles concern the complexities of high level math, many of them focus on issues that women in academia face, regardless of their area of specialty. Readers interested in a feminist take on the academy will find much to appreciate on this erudite blog by a well-respected mathematician. [CNH]

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For readers who believe the sun rises and sets with John W. Campbell and Isaac Asimov, or who just can't get enough of Andy Weir and B.V. Larson, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) offers a host of wonders. Here readers will find a frequently updated News and Views section, where recent posts have addressed such topics as how to write an effective synopsis of a recently finished novel, unlocked the secrets of the writing process, and examined the current state of the science fiction market. On the site, readers may also cast a vote for their favorite sci-fi writer in the prestigious Nebula Awards. Best of all, however, is the excellent Resources page, where readers will find sections for Educators, Readers, and Authors. Notably, the Readers section features great new (and often unknown) novels by some of the best authors in the business. [CNH]

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Cara Santa Maria is an award winning journalist who has hosted shows on brain surgery for the National Geographic Channel and tornadoes for the Weather Channel, among other feats. She also hosts a fantastic weekly science podcast called Talk Nerdy. Recent episodes have featured paleontologists, anatomists, evolutionary biologists, citizen scientists, atheists, science journalists, authors, artists, and quantum physicists. Readers will likely appreciate Cara's warm tone, her inimitable wit, and her ability to bring out the loquacious in her guests. With over 100 podcasts to listen to, including one in which Cara interviews 10-year old Stella Krone, an unusually advanced student with a yen for genetics, almost anyone will find something fascinating in this entertaining collection. [CNH]

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Finding established poets is easy. Finding mediocre unknown poets is simple too. For those readers who would like to discover the next generation of poets, those writers who are on the verge of being discovered and lauded, there is Fishouse, named for the converted writing shack that Lawrence Sargent Hall used to write his award winning fiction. On this site, readers may like to begin with news featured on the landing page. Recent updates have included information about recent Guggenheim Fellows, Whiting Award winners, and Ross Gay's National Book Critics Circle Award. From there, they may like to select the Poets tab, where they will find listings of dozens of excellent poets. Clicking on an individual's name will navigate to a page where readers may scout the poet's biography, read several of his or her poems, and even listen to the poet read a piece. The Poet Q&A, in which different poets answer set questions, is also thought provoking. [CNH]

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The Chemistry World Blog, from the Royal Society of Chemistry, presents a wide range of chemistry-related concerns, from thoughts on the uses of Botox to winners of the Novartis Prize. Recent posts have examined the history (and chemistry) of synthetic dyes, posited ergotism as a possible contributor to the horrors of the Salem Witch Trials, and celebrated the discovery of four new elements. The site also features podcasts (one representative title: "Killer sausages and the ditching twitches"), and allows readers to scout entries by tags, by categories, and with a keyword search. Finally, the Chemistry World Blog provides links to a number of other equally fascinating, equally erudite chemistry blogs, such as Chembark, Chemical Musings, and In the Pipeline. [CNH]

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Originally developed at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, while organizing a medicine and food virtual exhibition, WUD is "a customised search engine and online curation tool" that allows searching across two major collections of digitized cultural heritage materials: Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). WUD is available both as an app and in a desktop version. WUD is fast and easy to search, and presents abbreviated versions of the items found, with links back to the originals for more information. It's possible to limit by date using a timeline, and also by language - which is helpful given the size and diversity of DPLA and Europeana. Selected items from a results list can be saved and emailed on mobile or exported as a PDF on the desktop for future reference. WUD is open source, and the developers are interested in user comments on how well it works. Planned developments include more filters, such as a Medical Humanities "magic button," which will enable more targeted results for the history of medicine. What does the acronym stand for? It's a clin d'oeil, or nod and a wink, to the famous phrase, "What's Up, Doc?" [DS]

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For readers looking for a more visually streamlined internet experience, Minimalist for Everything may pay dividends. The Chrome add-on uses user-side JavaScript and CSS to customize websites with the click of a button. This may sound complex but, at least from this user's perspective, it's as simple as can be. For example, imagine that you would like to get rid of the search bar in your gmail account. Just go to the page, find the correct checkbox within Minimalist for Everything, and click it. The search box will disappear. Luckily, it is also easy to bring functions back once you've streamlined. In all, Minimalist for Everything allows readers to simplify the websites they use most. [CNH]

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Internet privacy has become an increasingly important issue over the past decade, and most people now understand that websites, businesses, and other entities can easily track and aggregate your personal information while you're online. Some people don't seem to mind this. But a growing number of businesses, activists, journalists, educators, and others are turning to Tor and tools like it to keep their locations, browsing habits, and IP addresses secret. Users may like to start by reading the section on the Tor website entitled, "Want Tor to really work?" This explains how to get the most out of the Tor browsing experience, which can be used with both Mac or Windows devices. Readers looking for more online privacy will find much to appreciate in this easily downloadable anonymity network. [CNH]

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