The Scout Report -- Volume 27, Number 18

Biographies offer windows into diverse perspectives, highlighting the stories of the individuals who shape the world. Biography Clearinghouse is a great resource for educators and caregivers looking for guidance as they introduce these texts to elementary and middle school readers. Rather than crafting pre-packaged lesson plans, Biography Clearinghouse focuses on creating easily adaptable templates that each user can tailor to their unique learning settings. Guides for four picture books and three chapter books are currently available, including William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad by Don Tate and Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone. Each book's framework includes commentary about the author, writing process, and writing structure. Additionally, the resource draws on the themes found within each book to suggest activities and avenues for further exploration. Readers can also browse information by author or illustrator. The Additional Resources section contains supplementary tools, including blog posts and recorded events. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Created by Elizabeth (Liz) Meador, a first year PhD student studying particle astrophysics and theoretical cosmology and a graduate of Whitman College's Physics and Astronomy department, Afrosteminism serves as a resource for underrepresented groups in STEM fields. Meador launched the site to counter the isolation that students in underrepresented groups may experience as they begin higher education journeys. The purpose of the site, a space where students can find advice on how to "survive and thrive," is ultimately to remind viewers that they "have a place in [their] field of choice."Afrosteminism features a variety of reference materials, including a list of "Tips for Survival and Thrival" (found under Tips), a collection of advice from those in the field (under Testimonials), and a Resources hub with information on scholarship, research, and conference opportunities. The Perspective page is a great place to end, as Meador reflects and offers insight on academic journeys. For more insight, follow along on Twitter (@afrophysicist__). [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Shipwrecks of the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal marks steam-powered commercial vessel wreck sites during the 1800s and 1900s. The resource paints both a geographical and historical picture of these shipwrecks by tracking the locations and adding descriptions of each event. The pinpoints are color-coded by date for ease of use. Yellow represents the years 1800-1849, green represents 1850-1899, purple represents 1900-1949, and red represents 1950-1999. White dots are used when the date is unknown. Clicking on a pinpoint pulls up a short blurb that includes some combination of images, videos, text, and links that briefly summarize the event. Viewers will learn a variety of shipwreck facts, from the purposes of the boats to the causes of the tragedies. Readers should note that zooming in on the map allows for easier browsing of high-density pinpoint areas (as individual pinpoints are hard to click from the default zoom selection). Jaime Simons created the project using Padlet, a digital canvas tool. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Educators and researchers may enjoy Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, a collection of peer-reviewed, adaptable resources designed for classrooms. Before diving into the collection itself, readers may want to check out the introduction, "Curating Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities," linked at the top of the page. Collection materials are organized by keyword for easy sorting. These keywords include skills-based topics such as "language learning" and "project management," as well as fields such as "poetry" and "storytelling." Users also have the option to browse by curator, following the link just below the Explore Keywords heading on the landing page. Within each keyword subsection, readers will find a curatorial statement and a topical list of artifacts. The project's editorial team includes scholars Rebecca Frost Davis (St. Edward's University), Matthew K. Gold (City University of New York), Katherine D. Harris (San Jose State University), and Jentery Sayers (University of Victoria). The work is available under a Creative Commons License. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

In development since 2017 and online since May 2019, The Resemblage Project is an exploration in digital storytelling looking at the experience of aging, which the project reminds us is "one of the few experiences that affects us universally." Based at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the project has gathered stories from several cohorts of the Aging and the Arts seminar taught there. Currently, there are about a dozen video stories in the Storybank (under Our Stories). Some connect across generations; for example, Gulamhussein Khalfan's My Happy Days tells the story of his migration from Mombasa, Kenya, to Toronto, Canada, at the age of 43 (recorded 30 years later when Gulamhussein was 73) and is followed by grandson Kaamil Khalfan's The Contours of Generation (recorded at the age of 21). In Aretina Chan's Aging With Splendour, the process of aging is compared to the process of creating sculpture, and art in general. The Project plans ongoing updates as more stories are gathered. [DS]

Comment on or rate this resource

Michigan State's Tone Perfect is an award-winning database that catalogs nearly 10,000 audio files of "monosyllabic sounds in Mandarin Chinese." As a "tonal language," in Mandarin Chinese the pronunciation of words is extremely important. For instance, the site gives the example of "ma," a word that means "mother," "hemp," "horse," or "scold," depending on one's tonal inflection. The four audio recordings on the Home page demonstrate this difference and demonstrate to users how the site's audio clips operate. The Home page also embeds two one-minute introductory videos that welcome visitors to the collection. The collection itself is available on the Browse page. Audio is recorded by six native Mandarin speakers, and audio recordings are tagged accordingly (e.g., FV1 represents "Female Voice 1" and MV2 represents "Male Voice 2"). Tone Perfect was created by Catherine Ryu of Michigan State University's Department of Linguistics and Languages. To view similar projects, and undertakings that have relied on Ryu's data, check out the Related Projects page. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Amplifying the voices of Chinese migrants in the American West, the Chinese Railroad Workers Project is an important archival effort from Stanford University. In the 1860s, thousands of Chinese migrants faced hazardous and exploitive working conditions as they helped create America's first transcontinental railroad. Despite their important contribution to American history, "absent from the historical record is any indication that the employers or the general public welcomed the Chinese to make their homes, raise families, and integrate into local communities." To ensure that their contributions and voices are not erased from the historical record, this project spent five years interviewing their descendants, tracing the generational impact. Family members offered stories and mementos that provide perspective on the "personal insights and feelings of those who count among their descendants Chinese who helped build the Central Pacific Railroad." Other historical documents give additional context to the archive. The resources are divided into three categories: artifacts, payroll records, and oral histories. The Chinese Railroad Workers Project is co-directed by Gordon H. Chang, (professor and Director of Stanford's Center for East Asian Studies) and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (professor and Director of Stanford's Program in American Studies). [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Located within the University of California-Davis's Asian American Studies Department, the Bulosan Center and Welga Archive document "the Filipino and Filipino American experience," with a particular focus on labor and activism. The Center is named after Carlos Bulosan, "a migrant worker, labor activist, and writer," whose work helped "galvanize [low-wage] workers, as well as the Filipino community more broadly, to organize themselves to fight against exploitation." The project's name is also significant; "welga" means "strike" in Tagalog, and honors the Filipino Americans who contributed to the labor and farmworker movements. The site provides multiple resources, including: a historical timeline, an exhibition on Filipina activists and organizers, and various library guides, among others. Archive users can also browse by collection or item type (e.g., "documents" and"oral histories"). Additionally, visitors are welcome to submit their own reflection on their experience with Filipino American labor history. The archive is operated by director Robyn Rodriguez and archivist Allan Jason Sarmiento. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

The Densho Digital Repository documents the grave acts of racism and deprivation of civil liberties inflicted against Japanese Americans during World War II. In doing so, the project hopes to instill in viewers a responsibility to continue to work towards equality. "Densho" means "to pass on to the next generation," and the archive focuses on preserving firsthand accounts, inviting users to "hear the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it." The collection includes oral histories and interviews, as well as images and documents, that collectively encompass various aspects of the Japanese American experience during WWII. The Home page offers three ways to navigate the archive: the "Browse" button leads to four organizational categories (narrators, collections, topics, and facilities), while the "Search" button pulls up a generic search bar. The third option is to look over the thumbnail images near the bottom of the Home page that highlight select collection items. Clicking on an image pulls up the full item record. Densho is based in Seattle, Washington, though the digital archive is a collaboration between multiple institutions. Readers can view a full list of contributors on the About page. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

Chinese-American politician Wing Luke broke barriers as "the first person of color on the Seattle City Council and the first Asian American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest." The Wing Luke Museum, named in his honor, also made history as "the only museum dedicated to the Asian Pacific American Experience in the United States." At the link above, readers can learn more about the museum, preview exhibitions, and view digital archives. For example, the Digital Collections section (found under the Programs tab) links out to the Cantonese Opera Collection and Takano Studio Collection. The former contains documents and records such as song scripts and musical programs, while the latter focuses on images. The Programs tab also highlights collaborative efforts between Wing Luke and other institutions, such as Your Story, Our Story, a digital storytelling collection focused on immigration and migration, and the Mix It Up Directory, a compilation of Asian Pacific American artists and art resources. Under Education, instructors will find a variety of curriculum ideas. The Wing Luke Museum is supported by various institutions and foundations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Park Service. [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

The MeshLab developers describe it as an "open source system for processing and editing 3D triangular meshes." The Features section of the site goes into detail on the software's capabilities for importing scanned 3D data to create meshes, merging multiple scans into a single object, normalizing and cleaning the resulting object, rendering a mesh with colors and textures, and exporting a mesh in formats suitable for 3D printing. The Support section of the site contains video tutorials demonstrating how these capabilities can be used in practice. The References section contains links to academic papers that describe MeshLab and that have used it in a number of applications. The Download section of the site provides installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, along with a set of sample meshes that can be used to experiment with the software. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource

Squint is a Python library that provides a Simple query interface for Tabular data that is designed to be "light-weight and easy to learn." Squint can load data from CSV files, Excel files, DBF files, connections to relational databases (e.g., MySQL or Postgres), or Pandas objects. The desired columns can be specified using Python's built-in data structures (e.g., sets, lists, and dictionaries), with results returned in the same format. In other words, to get a Python list of results a user would specify their desired columns as a Python list. In addition to simply returning the results, Squint also provides aggregate methods to construct basic data summaries and "functional methods" that employ user-specified functions for procedures like filtering, mapping, or reducing results. The Squint documentation includes tutorials demonstrating typical use of the software along with a detailed API reference. The How to Install Squint section of the How-To Guide (found by following the Documentation link) describes installing the software via pip. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource

Readers may want to return to A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America, a storytelling archive from the 05-01-2020 Scout Report, as well as browse the digital exhibition that inspired it, A Day in the Life of Asian Pacific America, linked in the introductory paragraph on the site. Both projects explore "life all across Asian Pacific America," the former through videos and the latter through images.

"Being visible is a political act." This quote from Lenore Chinn, featured in A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America, speaks to the purpose of the exhibition: using a variety of mediums, including interviews, videos, poems, and essays, "to offer multiple entry points and a nuanced engagement with queer Asian American and Pacific Islander life." As of this write-up, two parts of the exhibition have been launched: Queer Check-Ins and Queer Elders, with more to come. The Queer Check-Ins series features 12 poets from around the world, each with their own short video piece responding to the question, "Are you okay?" The series is meant to provide "glimpses of queer life - okay, not okay, and in between." This collection was curated by Franny Choi. The Queer Elders series features community elders, including Lenore Chinn, who reflect on past experiences, as well as "what the future holds." The full exhibition is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, AARP, and Kundiman (a nonprofit focused on "nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature,"). Readers will want to check back for more content slotted for release (including Queer Motion, Queer Time, and Queer Youth). [EMB]

Comment on or rate this resource