The Scout Report -- Volume 22, Number 24

Whenever any form of media is no longer protected by copyright law, it enters the public domain. The Public Domain Review is dedicated to collecting and curating this material in one place. Launched in 2011, the online journal and not-for-profit project features numerous images, complete books, audio clips, and videos. These materials range from the peculiar to the poignant, providing insight into both everyday life and extraordinary oddities. One can watch a 1916 adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (the first movie filmed underwater), view a gallery of beards, or read Queen Victoria's teenaged diary. Yet, The Public Domain Review offers more than a collection of intriguing ephemera. The project also publishes long-form essays that contextualize and analyze public domain material. In addition, the site features a monthly Curator's Choice series, where curators from around the world share public domain material from their institution's collections. Interested readers may subscribe to an email Newsletter to receive bi-weekly notifications about the latest article and the most interesting content featured in the Review. [MMB]

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Historians use primary sources to form and analyze questions about the past. These sources can also be challenging to integrate into middle school and high school social studies classrooms; oftentimes, they include archaic language and require a certain amount of background information to be of any use. As a result, primary sources tend to be relegated to supplementary reading lists in traditional history textbooks. The Stanford History Education Group wants to change that. With the Reading Like a Historian series, the Group has compiled 73 lessons about U.S. history and 37 lessons on world history that center on a diverse collection of primary sources, including letters, maps, photographs, and videos. Each lesson incorporates materials that enable middle and high school students to situate and evaluate historical events and actors, including select primary sources, concise background readings, and graphic organizers. These lessons are carefully scaffolded, highly interactive, and encourage young historians to connect sources from the past with enduring issues that persist in our own time. A Quick View of each lesson is available to all site visitors; those interested in downloading lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, or original documents will need to create a free account. [MMB]

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Nanoscience - the study of how materials take on unique properties when observed at the smallest of scales - has become increasingly important in all areas of science, with profound impacts on medicine, technology, and engineering. However, many members of the public have a hard time understanding this new and exciting field. Enter the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Network). Comprised of 14 museums, universities, and professional organizations, the NISE Network produces a variety of materials designed to help scientists, educators, and museum professionals engage the public with nanoscience. Detailed K-12 lesson plans are provided, as well as activities for more informal settings, such as after-school programs. Thanks to the inclusion of videos and detailed lesson descriptions, educators can implement and adapt these activities with ease. All materials are free to download and readers may subscribe to receive a monthly Newsletter to find out about community news, upcoming events, and more. [MMB]

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The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub is an international research center based at the University of California Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the DML Research Hub has three stated goals: to examine how digital technology has altered education (including formal and informal educational sites); to support innovations that use digital media to enhance education; and to research and promote best practices for facilitating education through digital media. The Hub is especially interested in how digital media can enhance civic participation. On its website, visitors can read about the team's research and watch video presentations about how to incorporate digital media into instruction. Visitors will also find a curated set of free and open resources, culled from websites, webinars, publications, and blog posts. Entries from the collaborative blog, dmlcentral, are most prominent. Authored by a diverse group of academics, blog entries include reflections about online youth activism, disparities in access to digital media, and how digital media is shaping conceptions and experiences of adolescence. New digital media tools for educators are also regularly profiled. [MMB]

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Expii functions as an interactive series of math and science textbooks. Po-Shen Loh, a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, created Expii with the aim of making math and science instruction more interactive and collaborative. The resource can be navigated in one of two ways: users may either search for a specific topic, such as "quadratic equations" or "Newton's first law," or they may use the Topic Map for game-like exploration. This second approach reveals the many connections between math and science and allows users to create their own journey through a variety of subjects, such as algebra, physics, astronomy, and calculus. Topics are accompanied by short explanations of concepts and often include complete practice problems. Notably, Expii is a crowdsourced learning site; contributors from around the globe can add their own definitions, create new problems, or update problem explanations. [MMB]

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STEM Teaching Tools, maintained by the University of Washington's Institute for Science + Math Education, is designed to help STEM educators develop a toolbox of instructional approaches that meet the Next Generation Science Standards. In the Tools Section of the website, educators can browse a number of Practice Briefs addressing common educator questions and topics. Some questions include "How can I get my students to learn science by productively talking to each other?" and "How can we promote equity in science education?" Instructional suggestions, activity ideas, and links to other resources are also provided with each Brief. This website is continually updated with new instructional ideas and resources, so readers should check back frequently. [MMB]

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During the first half of the twentieth century, eugenics, or the idea that communities could "improve" the "human race" by selectively determining who could have children, was bolstered by - and, in turn, reinforced - racist, ableist, and xenophobic ideas. The Eugenics Archives, written and maintained by a large team of Canadian and American scholars, researches the history and contemporary significance of eugenics in Western Canada. One of the major strengths of this project is how well it illustrates the many ways that eugenics was at once a social, legal, and academic movement. On this website, one can explore an encyclopedia of key concepts from the eugenics movement, view an interactive map that illustrates how eugenics developed in individual countries, and learn about the Aboriginal Residential Schools that First Nations people were forced to attend. Visitors will also find a powerful collection of interviews with Canadians who survived forced sterilization. Although a difficult read at times, the Eugenics Archives provides a comprehensive and important examination of how eugenics was perpetuated and its lasting consequences. [MMB]

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The British Museum recently hosted Faith After the Pharaohs, an in situ exhibit depicting religious life in Egypt from 30 BCE (when Augustus defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony and made Egypt a province of the Roman Empire) to 1171 CE (when Salah al-Din took power and became the sultan of Egypt). During the 1,200 years between these two events, the region saw both great diversity and great transformation in regard to religion. Egypt became majority-Christian in the fifth century CE, and then majority-Muslim in the tenth century. This Google Arts & Culture site includes spectacular images from the British Museum's exhibit, which, together, paint a vivid picture of Egypt during this dynamic time period. Visitors can view a bronze figure of the falcon-headed god Horus, an original manuscript that explains how one Egyptian community was converted to Christianity, and a collection of sandstone gravestones. By clicking on these photographs, visitors can gain additional information about each artifact. The website also includes videos, where experts explain different aspects of religious life in historic Egypt. [MMB]

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Between 1899 and 1930, Henry G. Peabody took 43 photographs of the Grand Canyon and compiled his images into a lantern slideshow. This slideshow serves as the basis for geographer Nicholas Bauch's interactive monograph, Enchanting the Desert. With this born-digital project, Bauch maps out the location of each of Peabody's photographs in order to examine the history of human interaction with the Grand Canyon. More specifically, the project examines the ways that white explorers, cartographers, and photographers named, mapped, and created infrastructure in the Grand Canyon. From the homepage, users may select Enter to explore this unique space-based project. There are six chapters in all, which include Toponymy, Settlement, and the history of Tourism. Each chapter is then divided into sections, each of which is illustrated with one of Peabody's photographs and an accompanying map. Note: Use of the Enchanting the Desert console is currently only supported by visitors using Safari or Chrome browsers. [MMB]

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That's What They Say is a delightful podcast about the history and modern-day use of the English language. For the past several years, Michigan Public Radio's Rina Miller and University of Michigan English professor Anne Curzan have hosted the program, which airs on Sunday mornings. Readers can browse and listen to the show's complete archive on Michigan Public Radio's website. These short, four- to five-minute episodes contain endless tidbits of entertaining trivia, but they also provide perspective about how language develops over time and the ways it is employed to serve a variety of social and cultural purposes. For example, in one episode, Curzan breaks down the common practice of using "indirect speech acts" to sound more polite. People tend to ask, "I was wondering if you know what time it is?" rather than the allegedly brasher-sounding "What time is it?" In another episode, Curzan describes the many grievances of Richard Grant White, who bemoaned the decline of the English language back in the 18th century. White called the word real estate "a pretentious intruder into American life" and declared donate to be an "utterly abominable" verb. [MMB]

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On March 18, 1965, cosmonaut Aleksei Leanov left his spacecraft during an orbit around the earth and became the first person to walk in space. In 1969, Neil Armstrong took the first human step on the moon. And in 1984, Bruce McCandless became the first "human satellite," using a Manned Maneuvering Unit to walk in space without being fettered to a spacecraft. All three men participated in what is called "extravehicular activity" (EVA), any action in space that occurs outside of a spacecraft. EVA is the subject of a new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Outside the Spacecraft. For those unable to visit the museum in person, this sleek website lets readers learn more about the equipment design that enables EVA, watch the original 1965 footage of Leanov's first extravehicular foray into space (a feat which, as the caption explains, was nearly fatal), and take a peek at artwork inspired by EVA. [MMB]

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Palaeocast is a free web series that explores "the fossil record and the evolution of life on earth." Hosted by a rotating group of six paleontologists and current graduate students, Palaeocast's hour-long segments discuss early vertebrate evolution, how dolphins developed echolocation, and the Permo-Trissaic Mass Extinction - an event about 250 million years ago when a staggering 95% of all species died out. Episodes, of which there are currently 65, are organized by geological eras: Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, and Precambrian. Interested listeners can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. However, there is one great advantage to visiting the Palaeocast website to listen to the series: each individual podcast is accompanied by numerous photographs, diagrams, and the occasional three-dimensional video. This additional media provides for a more dynamic learning experience as listeners may view fossils, skeletal diagrams, and timelines while they listen to each podcast. [MMB]

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Between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s, P.A.B. Widener and Andrew Mellon donated numerous seventeenth century Dutch masterpieces to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. As a result, the Gallery has one of the best collections of seventeenth century Dutch art in the world. In 2014, curator Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. made the collection available online. Visitors to this online collection can browse over 100 paintings, including works by Rembrandt Van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer. In addition, the website includes a video interview with Wheelock about how the Gallery has continued to grow and curate this impressive collection. Wheelock notes that Widener and Mellon believed that the years 1630-1660 comprised the apex of seventeenth century Dutch art, ignoring work produced during the early or latter years of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, these donors overlooked still lives and maritime paintings, two important artistic movements. In the past few decades, the Gallery has made an effort to incorporate additional diversity into its collection, providing visitors with a more complete representation of Dutch art in the seventeenth century. [MMB]

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Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts presents primary texts and images on both cognitive and physical disability between the years 1780 and 1914. Authored by over 20 scholars of disability studies, the site includes detailed annotations of over 60 texts and artifacts. These items range from medical instruments (such as an 18th century hearing aide) to literature, both famous (Jane Eyre) and obscure (the fairy tales of Dinah Mulock Craik). Together, these sources create a vivid portrait of how disability was imagined and discussed by medical professionals and artists alike. The Discover section lets readers experience the collection by themes, such as technology, literature, and institutions. For those looking to dive into more scholarship on disability studies and the nineteenth century, the Bibliography provides a mass of sources ranging from online resources to books to scholarly articles and book chapters. [MMB]

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Somewhere you might have a treasured store of old family photos and letters left from your parents or grandparents. We treasure these memories of loved ones, which are often passed down through generations. But increasingly, we rely on digital tools and resources to safe keep our memories on a blog, our photos on a smart phone, or our correspondence in email. How can we ensure that these memories are preserved for our own progeny? The Personal Digital Archiving website, from the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, attempts to ameliorate this problem by providing a plethora of resources on best practices for ensuring that your important digital memories last. Readers may want to start with watching the short "Why Digital Preservation is Important for You" video, which offers an introduction to the basics of saving our digital objects. For more detailed information, pages are offered for the specifics of Digital Photographs, Digital Audio, Digital Video, Electronic Mail, Personal Digital Records, and Websites. Librarians will want to check out the section Personal Digital Archiving Day Kit, which offers resources for hosting a Personal Digital Archiving Day event. [MAM]

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Maps can serve multiple purposes; one can use maps to chart the top mountain biking trails in America, keep track of upcoming events, or help plan a family trip. Mapme can be used for all of these purposes. After creating a free account, users will find two different formats to explore, Mapme Story and Mapme Classic. Mapme Story allows users to integrate maps, text, images, and videos in order to create a comprehensive, visually compelling graphic. For example, a social studies teacher might ask students to chart out and explain the expedition of Lewis, Clark, York, and Sacagawea. Mapme Classic, on the other hand, with its clean and simple design, is best for users looking to organize a lot of content about one specific place. An individual, business, or non-profit planning an event could use this tool to advise guests about local accommodations or entertainment. For more ideas about how to use Mapme, the Gallery reveals innovative ways that others have used this tool. [MMB]

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Datawrapper is a chart, graph, and map-making tool designed specifically to help journalists create clear, aesthetically appealing visuals. However, this tool is also useful for anyone looking to publish or embed data visualizations easily. Data may be added by either copying and pasting a Microsoft Excel document or by uploading a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file. Next, Datawrapper instantly creates a variety of charts. Users can select the chart that best presents their data, then add labels, change colors, and adjust the size of the chart. Users can download their charts, graphs, or maps as a Portable Network Graphic (PNG) for free. For a monthly fee, users can embed charts in websites. [MMB]

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