The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 27

Science teachers at both the elementary and secondary levels may appreciate this collection of learning and education resources from the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). This project offers a variety of resources geared toward learning about wildlife, plants, and biodiversity. For example, biodiversity cards offer visitors "a fun way to share and learn about the traits or characteristics of organisms," and EOL provides pre-made cards as well as tutorials and tools to make your own as a classroom project. Biodiversity cards can also be incorporated into EOL's numerous lesson plans, which are aligned with NGSS standards and organized by grade level for students from grades 2-12. These lessons are built around themes such as classification, science skills, and energy flow. Teachers may also be interested in EOL's educational podcasts, each episode of which is about five minutes long and features an interview with a scientist about one species. Finally, to help situate biodiversity in its geographical context, EOL also provides several Google Earth video tours (accompanied by downloadable KMZ files) on topics such as Arctic tern migrations and invasive marine algae. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

The discovery and development of antibiotics were revolutionary for modern medicine. However, with their increased use concerns about antimicrobial resistance and "superbugs" also emerged. The Antimicrobial Stewardship Project (ASP) aims to help society navigate this by "offer[ing] freely available, high-quality information and educational resources on antimicrobial stewardship practice, research, and policy." This initiative from the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), which was featured in the 4-12-2019 Scout Report, offers a wide range of approachable online content designed for policymakers, health professionals, and the general public alike. Here, visitors will find recent news articles and policy updates, as well as a podcast and webinars. Instructors may want to check out the Educational Multimedia section, which features an extensive collection of citizen science projects, online games, videos, infographics, and more. In addition, this section includes many workbooks and toolkits for medical professionals, who may also be interested in ASP's Clinical Tools and Bibliography sections. CIDRAP was founded in 2001 and is directed by Dr. Michael T. Osterholm. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Educators, students, and anyone interested in the psychology of how we learn may want to check out the Learning Scientists. This resource is created by a team of cognitive psychology researchers and aims to "make scientific research on learning more accessible to students, teachers, and other educators." Visitors may want to begin by reading the website's FAQ page to find quick information on the different strategies for effective studying and teaching, with links to the project's related blog posts for more in-depth explanations. Those who prefer visual guides will find posters and PowerPoint slides illustrating six distinct learning strategies under Downloadable Materials. The site also offers 7 videos and a podcast series with more than 40 episodes, as of this write-up. The Learning Scientists was co-founded in 2016 by Megan Sumeracki, an assistant professor of psychology at Rhode Island College, and Yana Weinstein-Jones, who at the time was an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. This project has received funding from organizations such as the Wellcome Trust and the higher education nonprofit IDEA, as well as support from individual donors. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Artists in Paris is an open-access digital humanities and art history project that maps hundreds of 18th-century artists' homes and studios. This website's database contains an entry for 471 artists. All of these artists were "members of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture) between 1675 (when comprehensive address records began) and 1793 (when the Academy was disbanded during the French Revolution)." While it's possible to search by artist name, drawing on personal knowledge of French 18th-century painters and sculptors, there is a handy Guide section that explains how to get the most out of the resource. Perhaps the easiest way to start using Artists in Paris is to filter by year, which produces color-coded markers on the map indicating addresses where artists lived. The color of the marker indicates the type of artist, such as history painter, engraver, or landscapist. Clicking on the markers displays information about the corresponding artist. For example, when filtering for 1778 there are 10 green markers indicating portrait painters, including Alexandre Roslin (1718-1793), who lived at four different addresses in Paris during his career. The principal investigator of the project is Hannah Williams, and the website was built by Chris Sparks. [DS]

Comment on or rate this resource

For readers interested in learning American Sign Language (ASL), the YouTube channel of American Sign Language University (ASLU) is a wonderful free resource. Launched in 2007, this channel is run by Dr. Bill Vicars, who has taught ASL for over 20 years and is a professor of deaf studies at California State University, Sacramento. Here, visitors will find dozens of videos featuring Vicars teaching ASL lessons to one of his students, allowing viewers to learn along with the student. 60 of these lessons are organized into 4 playlists comprising a sequential curriculum designed for beginning ASL learners. Other more advanced playlists focus on medical sign language and ASL linguistics. There are also numerous individual videos demonstrating, for example, fingerspelling, jokes, and law-related ASL. Vicars, who was born deaf and is immersed in the Deaf community, intends his channel to be a "[r]esource site for ASL students, teachers, interpreters, and parents of Deaf children," and it acts as an extension of ASLU's main website, Lifeprint.com (see the 7-14-2006 Scout Report). New videos are often added to the channel, making it well worth repeat visits. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

The thought-provoking project "What It Means to Be American" describes itself as "a national, multiplatform, multimedia conversation ... bring[ing] together leading thinkers, public figures, and Americans from all walks of life to explore big, visceral questions about how our nation's past can help us understand its present and imagine its future." Launched in April 2014, this project is produced by Zocalo Public Square (featured in the Scout Report on 5-24-2013) and hosted by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and Arizona State University. Through hundreds of engaging essays and interviews, as well as live public events, "What It Means to Be American" delves into its eponymous topic from a wide variety of angles. Examples include the story of how the now-iconic Grand Canyon became famous thanks to a daring expedition led by scientist and Civil War hero John Wesley Powell (published April 25, 2019) and an essay on the industrial designer Raymond Loewy, whose streamlined designs for companies such as Coca-Cola and Studebaker and talent for personal branding had enormous influence on the American marketplace (published May 22, 2019). With new content still being added, this project offers interested readers seemingly infinite ways to consider the meaning of being an American. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Historians, scholars, and readers with an interest in Native American history may want to check out the Indigenous Digital Archive (IDA). Launched in 2017, this ongoing project enables visitors to "explore the history of US government Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries." Also known as residential schools, these government-run boarding schools were created to forcibly assimilate young Native Americans into mainstream American culture by separating them from their own traditions, cultural practices, and languages. The archive provides access to more than 500,000 primary source documents related to these schools, including letters, school records, yearbooks, and more. Readers can browse the IDA by categories such as school names, tribes, themes, and series, and they can also search the collections by keyword. Directed by archivist Dr. Anna Naruta-Moya, the IDA is a collaboration between the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, the New Mexico State Library's Tribal Libraries Program, and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. It is supported by funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and from the Knight Foundation. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 this July, the BBC World Service has produced this in-depth podcast series detailing "the dramatic, definitive story ... about the men and women who reached for the moon." 13 Minutes to the Moon explores the lead-up to the first human visit to the moon through interviews with the scientists, programmers, engineers, and astronauts involved in the mission and the overwhelming feeling of relief and accomplishment after the landing. The podcast, which is comprised of twelve episodes, "is the story of how the final 13 minutes of Apollo 11's journey to the moon was a success," but also explores what events happened in the decade before the mission in order to make one of the defining moments of the 20th century actually happen. The first episode, "We Choose to Go," kicks off with President John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice University in Houston, TX announcing his vision in sending astronauts to the moon, thus further heightening the competition between the US and the Soviet Union in the Space Race. 13 Minutes to the Moon is hosted by Kevin Fong with theme music produced by Hans Zimmer. Episodes can be downloaded from the link above or accessed on your favorite podcast app. [JLB]

Comment on or rate this resource

A Continent Divided: The U.S. - Mexico War is a collaboration between the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the University of Texas at Arlington's library. This war remains "the largest and most significant armed struggle between two nations in the Western Hemisphere." One of the major missions of this project is to "digitiz[e] primary source materials drawn from the UT-Arlington Library's Special Collections, long recognized as one of the premier repositories on the 1846-1848 conflict." Visitors to the site have a plethora of topical material to browse, including collections in the library relating to the war and original maps from the mid-19th century, and embedded story maps. Readers who enjoy looking through archived newspapers may want to navigate to that section, available under Documents from the Browse tab. Topical story maps (created using the esri platform) are available under the Topics tab; some included titles range from "Army of Occupation," "Women and the War," and "Occupation and Aftermath." [JLB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Social studies teachers may be interested in this lesson plan from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Created with students grades 6-12 in mind and designed to take place in 3 sessions, this lesson plan focuses on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the first session, students are asked to learn about and compare George Washington with George Mason, who argued for the Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution. For the second session, students work in groups to examine individual amendments more closely, rewrite them in more familiar language, and discuss their order of importance. Finally, in the third session, students discuss the constitutionality of different scenarios using the Bill of Rights to support their arguments. These scenarios, as well as links to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and background contextual material, are provided. This free lesson plan is one of many available on the Gilder Lehrman Institute's website. Founded in 1994, the nonprofit Gilder Lehrman Institute is "dedicated to K-12 history education while also serving the general public." [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Recogito is a collaborative platform for adding annotations and semantic data to text files and images. In the Tutorial section, users will find a ten-minute introduction that briefly illustrates how to add and annotate a single document. Annotations can indicate that a selected snippet of text or region on an image refers to either a place, a person, or an event. When tagging locations, automatic suggestions are provided from a number of built-in gazetteers. The semantic annotations are useful for exploring the relationships across a set of documents (e.g., by finding all mentions of a specific person). Users can also publicly publish their annotated documents by marking them "visible to all." The free instance of Recogito on Pelagios.org imposes a 200MB total size limit for data stored within a workspace. However, images may be stored on an IIIF server outside of Recogito's limit. Recogito is free software, distributed under the Apache license, with source code available on GitHub. The project README also includes instructions for running a Recogito instance on one's own server. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource

Cherrytree is a structured note taking application with support for rich text formatting and syntax highlighting for a number of common programming languages. Its files contain a related set of hierarchically arranged sub-documents, which Cherrytree calls nodes, that are organized in an outline structure. In addition to formatted text, nodes may also contain tables, images, embedded files, and code blocks. For many scripting languages, users may right click a code block to execute the code that it contains. Cherrytree files are exportable as PDFs, HTML websites, or folders of plain text files. The application website features a manual generated from a single Cherrytree file and the Downloads section of the site contains a Windows installer and .deb and .rpm package files for common Linux distributions. Section 3.4 of the Cherrytree manual outlines how technically inclined macOS users may install Cherrytree via Homebrew. Cherrytree is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource

We originally featured this resource in the 7-29-2016 Scout Report, and since then Voces has redesigned their website and started posting entire interview transcripts online. With more than 800 stories available, Voces continues to be an excellent resource for educators and the general public alike.

Between 250,000 and 750,000 Latinos and Latinas served in WWII, yet their stories are often left out of historical accounts. In 1999, the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin launched the U.S. Latino and Latina WWII Oral History Project to rectify this omission. Project participants interviewed hundreds of WWII veterans and wrote a series of articles based on these conversations. In 2010, the project began to collect interviews with veterans of the Vietnam and Korean wars, as well, and changed its name to the Voces Oral History Project. On this website, visitors can browse articles about veterans' experiences, which are tagged by a variety of themes. In addition, the project has more recently compiled small documentary films, in addition to photo documentaries. These articles and short films provide powerful resources for the history classroom. The Voces Oral History Project is directed by its founder, Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, who is also a professor of journalism at UT-Austin.

Comment on or rate this resource