The Scout Report -- Volume 24, Number 36

Launched in 2017, The Digital Panopticon is a fascinating research project exploring the impacts of various punishments on approximately 90,000 people who were sentenced at London's Old Bailey between 1780 and 1925. This project brings together "millions of records from around fifty datasets" into a searchable database, including trial records, transportation records of convicts who were sent to Australia, and many more. Of particular interest are the "convict lives" pages, which feature brief biographies of individual convicts whose life histories were "reconstructed using the Digital Panopticon website," while the historical background section offers helpful contextual information about the British criminal justice system at that time. Students and educators will want to check out the research and teaching section, which contains themed research guides as well as resources for using The Digital Panopticon in classrooms. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Digital Panopticon is "a collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield, Tasmania, Oxford, and Sussex," with Barry Godfrey, professor of Social Justice at the University of Liverpool, as its principal investigator. [JDC]

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STEM educators and researchers interested in engaging with the public may find Informal Science to be a valuable resource. Informal Science features a diverse collection of pedagogical resources designed to help support STEM educators in lifelong learning environments beyond formal classrooms. Here, readers will find a "portal to project, research and evaluation resources designed to support and connect the informal STEM education community in museums, media, public programs and a growing variety of learning environments." The homepage features an interface where visitors may search Informal Science's collection of resources by a variety of fields such as learning environment (e.g. theater programs or conferences), audience (e.g. pre-K children or policymakers), or discipline (e.g. art or mathematics). The menu bar at the top facilitates browsing through their guides on developing projects, conducting research using informal STEM education, and evaluating projects. Informal Science is funded by the National Science Foundation and operated by the Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education. [JDC]

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Bibliophiles and historians may be interested in Annotated Books Online (ABO), "a virtual research environment for scholars and students interested in historical reading practices." Visitors to this project will find a database of more than one hundred scanned early modern texts dating from the late 1400s to the late 1600s, which may be searched by keyword, title, author, language, and a variety of other fields. A collapsible advanced search menu allows readers to sort their results in multiple ways as well. Those new to ABO may want to check out the project's video tutorial for demonstrations of how to search the database and how to add your own annotations, such as translations and transcriptions. ABO is an international collaboration coordinated by Arnoud Visser, Professor of Textual Culture in the Renaissance at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and at this time of writing the project includes contributions from fifteen libraries around the world. [JDC]

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Reading bedtime stories to children is a common strategy to boost kids' literacy--but what about doing the same for math? Parents hoping to prevent math anxiety in their children may find Bedtime Math to be a formidable ally. This resource offers more than two thousand short math puzzles designed as fun activities for parents to do with their kids at bedtime. New puzzles are added daily and each features "a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in." Parents can subscribe for free to get new daily Bedtime Math puzzles via email or they can download a free app (available for iOS and Android devices) where they can access the puzzles in both English and Spanish. Bedtime Math also offers the "Crazy 8s Math Club!" a kit of free resources designed to be used for fun after-school recreational math clubs. Bedtime Math was created by Laura Overdeck, a mom with degrees in astrophysics and public policy who loved playing with numbers as a child. Bedtime Math's activities have been used in studies by the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University, who both found their offerings to be beneficial. [JDC]

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Founded in 1989 by ornithologist David F. DeSante, the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) is a nonprofit organization that "studies the abundance, vital rates, and ecology of bird populations to enable scientifically sound conservation of birds and their habitats." IBP focuses primarily on bird studies in North America, the Neotropical region, and the Pacific Islands. Visitors to their website will find a wealth of information about IBP's numerous programs, such as their flagship Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program, which monitors bird demographics throughout the U.S. and Canada via a collaborative network of more than 1,200 stations run by public agencies, NGOs, and volunteers. Other notable IBP programs include the Sierra Nevada Bird Observatory in California and the Monitoreo de Sobrevivencia Invernal (MoSI) Program, which studies "the winter habitat needs of migrant and resident birds in the Neotropics." Readers may also be interested in the IBP publications database, where they will find hundreds of peer-reviewed publications (searchable by program and author) written by IBP staff and collaborators, the majority of which are downloadable as free PDFs. [JDC]

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Ben Franklin's World offers listeners an excellent avenue to learn about a myriad of aspects of early American history, as well as the historian's craft. This weekly podcast is hosted by historian Liz Covart, who is also the Digital Projects Editor at the College of William and Mary's Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Episodes are typically structured around an interview with a guest historian, includes a discussion of the guest's research, and also a time warp question, "where guests respond to a hypothetical history question about what might have been if something had occurred differently or if someone had acted differently." On each episode's page, readers will find a summary of the discussion and links to other relevant websites and publications, as well as links to related episodes with complementary content. History students and educators may want to check out the "Doing History" episodes, which are focused specifically on the historian's process. Ben Franklin's World can be also found on platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. [JDC]

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Nearly one year after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, the island is still struggling to recover. Instructors wanting to discuss this issue in their classrooms may be interested in this lesson plan from The Choices Program at Brown University, a program that "challenges students to consider multiple viewpoints on a contested issue" and offers a number of lesson plans centered on discussing news events. This particular lesson asks the focus question, "Who is responsible for Puerto Rico's recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Maria?" Here, teachers will find a fully developed interactive lesson plan with downloadable PDF handouts providing background reading on the historical relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, a selection of eight contemporary sources for students to analyze and compare, and worksheets to accompany the readings. This resource also includes suggestions for "extra challenges" and a 37-minute video. [JDC]

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Educators may appreciate Countryside Classroom, where they will find over three hundred free teaching resources centered around "themes of food, farming, and the natural environment." Countryside Classroom is a UK-based educational resource portal managed by the nonprofit LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) Education on behalf of over thirty partner organizations. Their collection of well-organized guides, case studies, and other materials has an easy-to-use search interface where readers can narrow their search results by a variety of fields. Target age groups range from as young as 3-4 years old to 16+, and the collection includes resources applicable to a wide range of academic subjects, such as music and business, as well as nutrition and geography. Readers in the UK may also want to check out the rest of the Countryside Classroom website, which offers information about potential field trip locations and individuals and organizations available for advice. [JDC]

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Readers interested in early photography may enjoy Daguerreobase, where visitors can explore more than 16,000 daguerreotypes held by museums and in private collections all over Europe. This vast database can be searched by keyword and filtered by fields such as date and name of the specific collection where the daguerreotypes are held, such as Det Nationale Fotomuseum in Denmark. Readers may also be interested Daguerreobase's free 70-page ebook (found in the About Daguerreobase section) which explains the project and gives background information about the history and technique of daguerreotype photography. In addition to being a place to view daguerreotypes, Daguerreobase is a "collective cataloguing tool for daguerreotypes" that allows individuals, as well as organizations, to "edit and store records of individual daguerreotypes and establish relations to other records based on a wide range of characteristics." The records for individual daguerreotypes can be highly detailed and may contain metadata on the daguerreotype itself, as well as on its housing and gallery information. At the time of this writing, Daguerreobase is a collaborative project between seventeen partners in thirteen European countries. [JDC]

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Map aficionados may enjoy this intriguing series of data visualizations published by Bloomberg in late July 2018. Here, readers will find an interactive visual explanation of land use in the continental United States based on different categorizations used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). As viewers scroll through the colorful maps, which alternate between showing the approximate locations of the different uses and the total area used by each, they are simultaneously presented with short contextual explanations. For example, the maps illustrate that while about a fifth of the country is devoted to cropland, the area used to grow food that people eat is "much smaller--only about the size of Indiana, Illinois and half of Iowa combined." These maps were created by Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby for Bloomberg Graphics using data from sources such as the USDA, the National Land Cover Database, and the U.S. Census Bureau. A brief explanation of their methodology and a list of their sources is included at the end of the presentation. [JDC]

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From the American Philosophical Society (APS) Library comes Americanization: Then and Now, a digital exhibition examining a 1919 pamphlet entitled "Americanization: What Is It? -- What To Do," which advocated for a particular viewpoint regarding immigrants to the United States in ways that may be both familiar and surprising. The exhibition begins by first delving into the substance and rhetoric of the pamphlet itself, which is made available to readers in its entirety, as well as the historical context surrounding its publication. Next, the exhibition provides background information on the organization behind the pamphlet, the National Security League, as well as on some of its members who were also part of the APS. Finally, readers are given a brief explanation of the project, accompanied by a list of further reading and links to other relevant digital resources. Launched in 2018, Americanization: Then and Now was conceived and written by Will Fenton, who recently earned his PhD from Fordham University and specializes in early American literature and digital humanities. [JDC]

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Are the stars out tonight? is a wonderful story map exploring the issue of light pollution. This resource was created by Brendan Conway, a geography teacher at Notre Dame School in Cobham, UK, who opens this piece by pointing out that the lyrics to the 1934 song "I Only Have Eyes For You" (from which this story map gets its title) could very well be about light pollution. Conway goes on to explain the different types of light pollution and its impacts on humans as well as on the environment, incorporating relevant historical tidbits along the way. He then presents "dark sky places" as an antidote to light pollution, taking viewers on a global tour of designated dark sky places via an interactive map that incorporates recognized designations from the International Dark-Sky Association and the IUCN Dark Sky Advisory Group. This richly detailed story map is full of beautiful images (and thus occasionally requires time to load) and also includes links to additional information throughout. A full list of sources is also included at the end. [JDC]

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The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) presents The Show Must Go On, an excellent online exhibition detailing theater in America during the Great Depression. Here, readers will find an exploration of the era's theatrical history accompanied by numerous contemporary photographs from the collections of the DPLA and its partner organizations. Beginning with the decade leading up to the stock market crash of 1929, the exhibition provides contextual explanations of the societal and cultural shifts at play before the Great Depression struck. Readers will learn about the Federal Theater Project, which began in 1935 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal, as well as the innovations American theaters developed during this time, such as the Living Newspaper genre which "directly engaged audiences with social issues of the moment" using newspaper headlines as inspiration. The exhibition also pays attention to African-American theater, particularly the 1936 production of Voodoo Macbeth directed by Orson Welles, who reimagined Shakespeare's Scottish play as a Haitian story and cast it entirely with black actors. The Show Must Go On offers a unique window into a fascinating piece of American history. [JDC]

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Readers curious about how cities developed and functioned in different civilizations throughout history may enjoy Rise of the City, the most recent of the Penn Museum's annual public lecture series. This series of nine intriguing talks presented by scholars and curators in 2017-2018 "explore[s] what makes a city a city in diverse regions of the world." For example, in "The Urbanized Jungle: Ancient Maya Garden Cities," Simon Martin (Associate Curator of the American Section at the Penn Museum) explores how Mayan cities located in the middle of the jungle operated in an entirely different way than more familiar high-density city systems such as Rome. Each roughly hour-long talk includes an audience question and answer session at the end. Formally called the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and founded in 1887, the Penn Museum is "dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity." [JDC]

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In August 2018, the New York Public Library (NYPL) launched Insta Novels, an innovative concept that uses Instagram's stories and highlights features to make classic literary stories available to readers worldwide. In this blog post, the NYPL introduces the Insta Novels idea and explains how it works--since Instagram Stories advance automatically, the Insta Novels are designed with a place for the reader's thumb (or mouse for computer users) in the corner to prevent the page from "turning" until they are ready. The debut Insta Novel is Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Magoz, whose conceptual artwork has been featured in The New York Times and many other outlets. At the time of writing, Parts 1 and 2 of Alice have been posted on the library's Instagram account (@nypl), and more are sure to follow. NYPL has stated that Insta Novels editions of "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka are also in the pipeline. [JDC]

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Maildrop is a service that provides free, disposable email addresses to use when signing up for new websites or apps. These mailboxes are designed to be temporary and transient. A Maildrop inbox can hold at most 10 messages, and an inbox that doesn't receive a message within 24 hours is automatically cleared. No attachments are allowed and messages larger than 100KiB will be discarded. Per the Maildrop "How It Works" page, the service is designed to provide "no security" and "little to no privacy." Maildrop's front page gives a number of example uses for their disposable mailboxes. The Maildrop service works in any modern browser. Maildrop is a free software with source code available on GitHub under the MIT license. Self-hosting instructions and hardware requirements are included in the Maildrop GitHub repository. [CRH]

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Grsync is a graphical front-end to the venerable rsync command-line folder synchronization tool. Grsync is able to efficiently propagate changes between two copies of a folder by sending only the differences. It can be used both on local folders or over the internet. Grsync provides a user-friendly point-and-click interface to rsync for users that are less fond of using a shell. Sample uses for Grsync suggested on the project website include synchronizing a music collection with a removable drive, backing up personal files to a network drive, or migrating files from an old, small hard drive to a newer, larger one. A Windows executable is available for download from the Grsync website. MacOS users can install Grsync using MacPorts or Homebrew. Linux and BSD users can find Grsync in their package management systems. Grsync is a free software with source code available under the GNU General Public License from the Grsync website. [CRH]

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Originally featured in the 9-11-2015 Scout Report, Penguin Books has since added several new titles to this resource, including guides for Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Shelly Turkle's Reclaiming Conversation.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this list of Teacher's Guides from Penguin Books is the sheer number of titles. There are almost 20 guides for Shakespeare's works alone, including exegeses on Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, King Lear, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The other several dozen guides cover titles as diverse as George Orwell's 1984 and E.L. Doctorow's City of God. Along the way, educators will find guides to books by Jane Austen, Ayn Rand, Aristophanes, Frederick Douglas, and Khaled Hosseini among many others. The guides themselves are intellectually rigorous and visually attractive. For instance, a guide to H.G. Wells The Time Machine includes an introduction, a plot summary by chapter, an entire section dedicated to strategies to use before reading, a list of vocabulary words for each chapter, a possible reading schedule, and many other helpful resources.

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