The Scout Report -- Volume 13, Number 15

http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/pdrperio.html

The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes three periodicals aimed towards urban development professionals, policy makers, and scholars. This website brings all three of these periodicals together in one place, and visitors can look through current and past issues of ResearchWorks, Cityscape, and the quarterly report, U.S. Housing Market Conditions. For those interested in a more general-interest publication, Cityscape is a good bet, as it contains pieces on housing vouchers, ethnically diverse urban neighborhoods, and the legacy of the Fair Housing Act. ResearchWorks is the official newsletter of HUDs Office of Policy Development & Research, and here visitors can read about recent case studies and success stories in the area of urban development. There are some interesting theme issues here as well, including Universities Rebuilding America and The Publics Views of Affordable Housing. Finally, the U.S. Housing Market Conditions reports consist of statistical data and written reports on the quarterly status of economic and housing market trends for 10 geographical regions. [KMG]

http://vc.hul.harvard.edu:11080/vc/deliver/home?_collection=scarlet

The history of sensational trials goes back much further than the days of Court TV, and even past the sordid business of Leopold and Loeb, which was known as the Trial of the Century. The good folks at the Harvard University Library are well aware of this fact, and they recently created this fascinating online archive of 420 trial narratives for use by historians and members of the web-browsing public who might be intrigued by such goings-on. Titled Studies in Scarlet, this collection includes American, British, and Irish cases from 1814 to 1914 that involve domestic violence, seduction, breach of promise to marry, and murder. While many of the lives chronicled here are not well-known to the public, there are a few recognizable trials, such as the trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of Stanford White, the famed architect, and a transcript of the adultery trial of Caroline, Queen Consort of George IV. [KMG]

http://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/index.html

The Exploratorium in San Francisco continue to break new and intriguing ground with their latest online project, the Microscope Imaging Station. The actual physical Station resides at their museum, and was opened in 2004. Developed to complement this interactive exhibit, this online manifestation of the Station allows visitors to peer into the cells of living organisms such as sea urchins and zebrafish. The sea urchin feature is a real treat, as it is accompanied by a well-written essay on how this spiky creature may help unlock the secrets of genes, reproduction, and cancer. If that wasnt enough, the essay (as with other features on the site) includes a short video clip. The Gallery is definitely worth a stop as well. Here, visitors will find a wide range of high-resolution images and movies created with research-grade microscopes. Watching cells move, the fertilization process and the world of mitosis is a rather nice way to spend a few minutes, and visitors will probably want to pass the site along to friends and family. [KMG]

http://cndls.georgetown.edu/

New centers and institutes dedicated to the proposition of bridging the gulf between pedagogy and technological advances in the college classroom are nothing new, but The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) is definitely one of the leaders in this important area. Based at Georgetown University, CNDLS was started in 2000 and is primarily concerned with promoting discovery, engagement, and diversity in an ever-expanding conception of learning. By clicking on the Projects section of the site, visitors can learn about novel and classroom-tested pedagogical innovations in the humanities, law, and mathematics, to name but a few of the areas covered here. Visitors to each site (such as the one dedicated to online pediatric training), can read a summary of each project and then proceed to a separate website or related links. The site is rounded out by a calendar of events and contact information for those who would like to learn more about their work. [KMG]

http://devdata.worldbank.org/atlas-mdg/large.html

The World Bank established a set of Millennium Development Goals as both a challenge to poor countries to demonstrate good governance and to wealthy nations as a spur that would hopefully encourage them to support economic and social development. Recently, the World Bank created this visually engaging and sophisticated interactive atlas to track those eight goals, which include the promotion of gender equality, combating disease, and reducing child mortality. Visitors can click on any of these eight goals and they will be able to view maps of the world that document the progress that has been made in each nation. Clicking on each nation individually brings up clear and easy-to-read tables that chart additional changes within each separate goal. Visitors can export the data for their own use, and they can also resize the map to demonstrate the changes made over the past few years. [KMG]

http://www.marinetech.org/

Working together with a range of partners, including a number of community colleges, the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE), has created a number of valuable resources that will be useful for those with an interest in this field. The instructional resources are primarily related to those interested in careers in hydrographic surveying, aquaculture technicians, and several other fields. Visitors will appreciate the Careers, Jobs, Internships area which features profiles of these fields, current job listings, and other items. The education center is a real find, as it includes learning modules, worksheets, and other informative pedagogical tools for instructors. [KMG]

http://library.stanford.edu/depts/swain/hosted/earthday/2005/climate.html

Started by the late Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Earth Day has become a world wide event in its over thirty years of existence, and educators will find this site most helpful as they begin to develop lesson plans and exercises around this event. Created by the American Chemical Society, this site contains links to online resources that deal with the climate, various climatic regions, and ongoing changes in climate. The links are organized into three sections, and visitors can also read brief descriptions of the materials they can find on each site. There are some very fine links here, including one to NASAs Earth Observing System and the Global Climate Change site offered by The Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. [KMG]

http://themathworksheetsite.com/

For people of a certain age, the phrase math worksheet may conjure images of pieces of paper with wet purple ink, freshly mimeographed. For others, they might just say: Whats a mimeograph? Both groups will find things to like about this website, which brings together a number of math worksheets for general use. The site is maintained by Scott Bryce, and while some of the materials require a subscription, there is enough free material to warrant several visits. Visitors should take a look at the Preview section, where they can look over examples of instructional worksheets that cover concepts such fractions, mixed numbers, graphing, and measurement. The site is rounded out by a weblog, which is updated with additional materials and suggestions on using the site. [KMG]

http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/

The Library of Congress has indeed chronicled much of America, and this latest stellar effort will be of great interest to just about anyone with a penchant for learning about American history. Working with the National Digital Newspaper Program, the Library of Congress has created this prototype website to provide direct access to select newspapers from the period 1900 to 1910. Additionally, for this first phase the project coordinators decided to focus on newspapers that have ceased publication entirely. Visitors can use the Search Newspaper Pages function to examine those pages that have been digitized already, and they will definitely find a few surprises here. The papers include Paris, Kentuckys The Bourbon news, Washington, D.C.s The Colored American, and DeLands own Florida Agriculturist. Moving along, visitors can also use the newspaper directory to look for newspapers of interest from all over the country. [KMG]

http://collections.stanford.edu/menuez/bin/page?forward=home

Douglas Menuez began his careers as an intern with the Washington Post, and over the past several decades he has covered the AIDS crisis, the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, and a host of other topics. One of his projects included documenting the rise of Silicon Valley, and along the way he took some 250,000 photographs that together constitute an insiders look at the world of venture capital, the semiconductor industry, and of course, the heady early days of the Internets exponential growth. Recently, Stanford University acquired this prodigious collection. Visitors to this site can browse through approximately 2900 of these photographs, and given the number of images, this site certainly warrants several visits. [KMG]

http://images.lib.wvu.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=wvcp

Like many states, West Virginia has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize a wide range of photographs for use by the general public, historians, and those just curious about the states history. Created by staff members at the West Virginia University Library system, this online collection brings together 20,000 photographs. The search engine for the site is easy enough to use, but the site might have benefited from a number of subject guides or thematic collections for more casual users. Overall, the site is a real find, as users will enjoy looking through construction photographs of the Personal Rapid Transit system on the campus of West Virginia University, demonstration farm projects in Hancock County, and African American miners at work. [KMG]

http://www.earthsky.org/

Under the banner of A clear voice for science, the radio program Earth & Sky has been on the air since 1991. On this site, visitors can listen to the program, which has answered such questions as How slow does the slowest animal move? and How will Antarctic ice sheets behave? Visitors can browse their archive, listen to their podcasts, and sign up to receive RSS feeds here. One rather fine feature of the site is the Skywatching area. Here, visitors can learn about that nights sky, and what to watch for as they go outside. Visitors can also read and comment on their blog and read program transcripts. [KMG]

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gardening/0,1784,HGTV_3546,00.html

Dear Scout Report reader, we would like to ask you an important question: How does your garden grow? It is hoped that the answer is a positive one, but if not (or even if it is), this informative website about gardening and landscaping offered by HGTV may come in handy. The site brings together materials featured on some of their television programs, and a number of web-only features as well. Visitors may want to start by take a look over their Most Popular links, which include short essays (accompanied by illustrations and photographs) on topics like Landscape Makeover 101, Plant-Buying Boo-boos, and Water Features for Any Budget. Users looking for specific materials will want to click on over to the left-hand side of the homepage, where they will find an alphabetical listing of gardening-related topics. Finally, the site also includes video clips from some of HGTVs gardening and landscaping programs. [KMG]

http://www.tate.org.uk/ita/

Rothko, Picasso, and Kapoor are but some of the many artists covered in the delightful online course on the world of modern and contemporary art offered by the Tate Online website. Developed as part of their educational outreach efforts, this course offers a brief primer on some of the developments in this field of art, and for those who might find themselves intimidated by such a subject, this is a perfect place to start learning. Utilizing materials from the Tate Modern museum and a variety of other visual materials, this online course contains eight units, including Art and Materials, Art and Everyday Life, and Art and Politics. After registering on the site, visitors can proceed through these units at their leisure, and they can also download complementary brochures for each unit. [KMG]

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/

When he gave the money to create the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910, Andrew Carnegie charged the trustees of the new organization to use the fund to hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization. They have done so for the past ten decades, and they are currently interested in transforming the Endowment into the first truly multinational-ultimately global-think tank. On their homepage, visitors can delve right into some of their latest analyses, reports, and policy documents. The Publications area is a great place to look as well, as visitors can search through a variety of papers, including works like Political Reform in Yemen, Roots of Radical Islam in Central Asia, and Protecting Intellectual Property Rights in Chinese Courts. For those who would like to contact different staff members, there is the Experts section, which contains details on various persons who work for the Endowment. [KMG]

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/comic_abstraction/

This web site from MoMA presents one work each from 13 living artists, selected from about 30 pieces on display at the Museum. The underlying concept of the exhibition is that the work of these artists, although primarily abstract, shows influences from comic books and cartoons. Some of these influence are overt, such as Philippe Parreno's Speech Bubbles, mylar helium balloons, floating in a corner of a room; or boom, by Gary Simmons, a painting of a cartoon explosion. Others are veiled, for example the reference to racist caricature of Black minstrels in Ellen Gallagher's Oh! Susanna, in the form of popping eyeballs and thick lips that appear as a completely abstract pattern until examined closely. [DS]

http://www.weatherpop.com/

The homepage for this weather application asks: Are you bleary eyed from staring into bright white phosphor all day? If you answered in the affirmative, you may wish to click on through to WeatherPop 2.6. With this application, users can watch real-time Doppler forecasts, peruse three to five day forecasts, and peek into local visibility conditions. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.3 and newer. [KMG]

http://www.loki.com/

Do you know where you are right now? Would you like to? Loki 2.0 can tell you where you are by using existing WiFi access points, and then it can point users in the direction of local businesses, including restaurants, coffee houses and candy factories. In this latest version of Loki, the user interface has been substantially redesigned, and users will appreciate its new look. Its a fun way to look for interesting stuff in ones immediate locale, and it is compatible with computers running Windows XP and Mozilla Firefox 1.5. [KMG]

MLB celebrates Jackie Robinsons debut
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/2011AP_BBO_Jackie_Robinson_Day.html

How Jackie Robinson changed America
http://www.suntimes.com/news/will/341038,CST-EDT-GEO15.article

School rare bastion of Jackie Robinsons baseball legacy
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/BAGBAP8VRC1.DTL

NPR: A Test of Courage: Jackie Robinsons Rookie Year [Real Player] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9585147

Baseball and Jackie Robinson
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/robinson/index.html

The Jackie Robinson Story [Quick Time]
http://www.archive.org/details/Jackie_Robinson_Story_The

The first full week of this years baseball season was a fairly eventful one, particularly when one considers the number of games that were rescheduled due to snowstorms, torrential rains, and other intense weather situations. Given the recent climatic activity, it was nice to see the sun out at Dodger Stadium this past Sunday as the entire league paid tribute to the late Jackie Robinson, who successfully integrated the major leagues sixty years ago. A number of baseball legends were on hand for the event, including Joe Morgan, Dave Winfield, Hank Aaron, and Frank Robinson, who in 1975, became the first African American manager in the majors. Players around the league wore Robinsons number 42 on their uniform, and the St. Louis Cardinals Preston Wilson remarked that, I think more than anything I just want people to be able to learn and understand Jackie Robinsons life and what he had to endure. When thinking about the powerful effect that Jackie Robinson had on the sport of baseball and the entire nation, Robinsons widow Rachel said it best when she stated, Jacks legacy is all over the place. [KMG]

The first link will take users to a news article from the Seattles Post-Intelligencer that provides details on the celebration of this event at Dodger Stadium. The second link whisks users away to a recent editorial by George F. Will about Jackie Robinsons legacy. Moving along, the third link leads to a great article by the San Francisco Chronicles Chip Johnson about a celebrated baseball program in the East Bay area. The fourth link leads to a radio interview with author Jonathan Eig about his recent book on Jackie Robinsons rookie year. This link also includes a recording of Robinson reading his 1952 piece for the This I Believe series titled Free Minds and Hearts at Work. Persons with an interest in baseball history will be delighted to learn about the fifth link, which presents a small collection of baseball-related ephemera drawn from the Library of Congresss holdings. Here visitors can look at photographs of long-vanished ballparks, sheet music covers (such as the one for the Three Strikes two-step), and an early photograph of that most indefatigable of pitchers, Cy Young. For those readers who enjoy a traditional biopic now and then, the last link leads to the complete 1950 film, The Jackie Robinson Story. Jackie Robinson plays himself, the late Ruby Dee plays Rae Robinson, and the original tagline for the film was the very action-oriented: Youll HIT with Him! Youll RUN with him! Youll SLIDE With Him! [KMG]