The Scout Report -- Volume 24, Number 44

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on "the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels." The IPCC wrote this report in response to an invitation issued by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as part of the Paris Agreement of 2015. The report "highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C compared to 2 degrees C, or more," and also "examines pathways available to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, what it would take to achieve them and what the consequences could be." Readers may download the report's five chapters in full for a total of about 225 pages, or they may download the 34-page Summary for Policymakers for a condensed version. As Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II, stated, "This report gives policymakers and practitioners the information they need to make decisions that tackle climate change while considering local context and people's needs. The next few years are probably the most important in our history." The IPCC was established by the United Nations in 1988 to examine research on human-induced changes to the global climate. Since then, it has produced five major assessment reports, with the most recent in 2014, and several special reports on particular topics. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

In honor of Veterans Day, the National Education Association (NEA) has assembled this excellent collection of lesson plans and educational resources focused on military "service men and women past and present." Here, educators and other interested readers will find lesson plans, activities, background resources, and more, all organized by grade level: grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12. These teaching resources cover a broad spectrum of subjects. For example, in the lesson plan Veterans Day Is Celebrated in the United States Today, designed for grades 3-5, students "write biographical poems about a soldier following a provided format." As another example, in Women Aviators in World War II: "Fly Girls," a lesson plan for grades 6-8, students learn about the contributions of Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) using historical posters and newsreels, as well as the WASPs' personal recollections. This collection also includes links to background resources, such as the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress, whose archived veteran interviews can supplement lessons and help bring them to life. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Recent research suggests that role-playing simulations may be particularly effective for motivating people to take action on climate change, even across political divides. Climate Interactive, a project of the Washington, DC-based nonprofit New Venture Fund, has created several such resources that interested readers can access here. These include interactive tools, such as the downloadable C-ROADS and En-ROADS simulations, which allow users to model and assess the impacts of large-scale climate pledges and energy use decisions. Simulation programs include the World Climate Simulation, which is an interactive role-playing climate negotiation game for groups of 8-50 people that has had thousands of participants worldwide. Climate Interactive's tools and programs may be of particular interest to educators, but they have also been used by policymakers and NGOs, community and business leaders, and general audiences. Readers may also be interested in the project's upcoming and recorded webinars for guidance on how to facilitate the simulation exercises. Climate Interactive was founded in 2005 by Drew Jones and Beth Sawin at MIT's Sustainability Institute (now the Donella Meadows Institute). In 2017, it won Prospect Magazine's award for Best US Energy and Environment Think Tank. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

The Disability History Museum provides this collection of teaching resources intended to help "[integrate] disability history with larger themes commonly addressed in secondary and higher education U.S. History, American Studies, Civics, Government, and Law courses." Here, readers will find (at the time of this write-up) seven lessons in two thematic clusters, with each lesson containing primary sources, background essays, learning objectives, and a study guide. Four of these lessons are on the theme "Hearing Voices" and the Campaign for Moral Treatment, which centers around the nineteenth century reformer Dorothea Dix, while the other three lessons cluster around Educating the Senses: The 19th Century Awakes to Reform, which focuses on the wave of efforts to educate blind and deaf children. Each lesson is designed to stand alone but offers a different perspective on its corresponding cluster, and each cluster points out the relevant national standards with which its lessons align. This resource also provides a glossary that may be a helpful accompaniment to the included readings. Established in 2000, the Disability History Museum is a project of the educational media organization Straight Ahead Pictures. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Born at the turn of the twentieth century in a tiny Illinois farming community, Arnold Beckman went on to become an influential chemist, inventor, and philanthropist to whom the National Academy of Science awarded its highest honor: the Public Welfare Medal. Beckman's inventions include the first commercially successful electronic pH meter in 1934. From this, he started Beckman Instruments (now Beckman Coulter, Inc.), which grew to specialize in a wide range of laboratory and biomedical instruments. Beckman's personal papers and the corporate records of Beckman Coulter, Inc., have been made digitally available by the Science History Institute. The Beckman Historical Collection, which currently contains over 2,400 works, includes letters, photographs, business correspondence, advertisements, instrument manuals, patents, internal publications and memos, ephemera, and more. This collection is searchable and can be narrowed by numerous fields, and images can be downloaded as a variety of file types and resolutions. The Science History Institute, which was renamed as such in February 2018 following the 2015 merger of the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the Life Sciences Foundation, is a Philadelphia-based non-profit that "collects and shares the stories of innovators and of discoveries that shape our lives." [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Scholars, students, and researchers in a variety of fields may be interested in the holdings of the Education & Research Archive (ERA), which is the University of Alberta's open access digital archive. This resource "contains a variety of materials with enduring research and teaching value" and includes contributions from faculty and departments from across the University of Alberta campuses. Examples include graduate research and course materials from the School of Library and Information Studies, journal articles and research data from the Department of Biological Sciences, a wide variety of historical and contemporary reports and materials from the Edmonton Social Planning Council, and over 20,000 theses and dissertations from University of Alberta graduate students dating back to 1947. Other types of content that can be found in the ERA include books and book chapters; conference/workshop presentations and posters; research materials, such as images and field notes; and learning objects, such as PowerPoint lectures and practice exams. The ERA was developed and supported by the University of Alberta Libraries and is designated as an adoptive repository by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Literature scholars, librarians, archivists, and historians may be particularly interested in the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP), an international collaborative project creating "a critical digital archive of early twentieth-century publishers, beginning with Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press (est. 1917)." Launched in June 2017, MAPP focuses on "the stories not so often told about books: how they are made, designed, published, distributed, marketed, and read." This ongoing project contains (thus far) over 4,000 digitized artifacts, including dust jackets, financial records, letters, illustrations, production papers, ephemera, and more. Visitors may browse MAPP's collections by works, people, archival materials, and presses, or they can search the collection for a specific author, publisher, or text. Educators interested in digital humanities may want to check out the teaching section, where they will find syllabi, student work created using MAPP, and published articles. MAPP's team includes scholars from Simon Fraser University and King's University College (Canada), the University of Oregon and Stanford University (US), and the University of Reading (UK). [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Readers interested in free online courses from universities around the world, such as those offered on platforms like Coursera and edX, may find Class Central to be a helpful resource. Class Central is a search portal and reviews site specializing in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It describes itself as "a giant curated catalog of MOOCs spread across different online course providers," specifying that "We focus on quality, and we manually categorize and tag every MOOC." Visitors can search for courses by keyword or browse by subject, university, or provider, and Class Central also points out notable and popular courses. Each course listing provides a descriptive overview, links to commonly asked questions about the course provider, a list of related courses, and reviews written by people who have taken the course. Users can choose to register for a free Class Central account to keep track of courses they're interested in. While not every course cataloged by Class Central is free, many (if not most) of them are, and those that are not are clearly marked. Launched in 2011, Class Central also publishes the MOOC Report, which covers news, trends, analysis, annual roundups, and other articles about MOOCs and online education. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Inspired by student sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) emerged as "the only national civil rights organization led by young people." This influential organization is the focus of One Person, One Vote: The Legacy of SNCC and the Fight for Voting Rights, a documentary website with much to offer for general audiences and students alike. This resource uses photographs, oral history interviews, audiovisual materials, and documents to "chronicle the historic struggles for voting rights that youth, converging with older community leaders, fought for and won." Here, readers will find numerous profiles using primary sources to explore how specific individuals and organizations contributed to the struggle for voting rights, an interactive timeline, a map featuring stories from specific places in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, a helpful list of digital primary sources, and a bibliography of published secondary sources. One Person, One Vote was the pilot project for SNCC Digital Gateway, featured in the 1-25-2017 Scout Report. SNCC Digital Gateway is a collaboration between the SNCC Legacy Project, Duke University Libraries, and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Over the past several years student loan debt has emerged as an issue for many, and in August 2017 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report stating among its findings that approximately 44 million Americans collectively owe a staggering total of more than $1.4 trillion in student debt. Mapping Student Debt is a project that explores the geography of this debt burden and "[shows] how borrowing for college affects the nation, your city, and even your neighborhood, giving a new perspective on the way in which student debt relates to economic inequality." Visitors can examine three zoomable maps, each with several layer options, to get an introductory overview of student debt distribution, see how loan delinquency disproportionately affects minority populations, and learn how student loans relate to problems in the US labor market. Each map is accompanied by explanatory text highlighting particular locations of interest and describing the researchers' methodology, with links to lengthier explanations published elsewhere. Mapping Student Debt began in 2015 as a project of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth in partnership with Generation Progress and Higher Ed, Not Debt, but as of 2018, the project's updates have been made by independent researchers. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

In October 2018, the Art Institute of Chicago launched their newly redesigned website. As part of this redesign, the museum has also released over 52,000 images in the public domain from its digital archive, making them freely available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means that educators, students, and art lovers can now download high-quality JPEGs of works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Katsushika Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa. Artworks not yet in the public domain, like Georgia O'Keeffe's Blue and Green Music, have had their web viewing capabilities enhanced so that visitors can see more detail than before the site redesign. The collection's search tool has also been improved and, as the Art Institute's Executive Creative Director Michael Neault stated, "makes it easier to drill down and find exactly what you're looking for." In addition to the customary search and browse fields, the collection also has filters which may be helpful for educators, such as the option to display only works in the public domain, works currently on view in the museum's galleries, or works that have educational resources available. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

One needn't have sesquipedalian tendencies to appreciate Merriam-Webster's online Time Traveler tool. This interactive feature enables visitors to select a particular year and see which words were first known to be used in print during that year. With the most recent years listed first, the Time Traveler makes it fairly easy to look up birth years or other personal anniversaries, and the tool also includes a handy search bar for those wondering what words were first printed in, say, 1618 (for the curious, that year includes balcony, quota, and usefulness). From the results of their chosen year, each word links to its definition. In their explanatory note, Merriam-Webster specifies that the year indicates "the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover" rather than the first time the word was ever used. In keeping with the dictionary's conventions, visitors to the Time Traveler can look up individual years for the Modern English period (1500-present), centuries for the Middle English period (1100-1499), and the catch-all "before 12th century" for the Old English period (700-1099). [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

Statistics Explained offers visitors a searchable "guide to European statistics...presenting statistical topics in an easily understandable way." This resource is an official publication of Eurostat (the European Union's statistical office in Luxembourg) which provides high-quality statistics at the European level, allowing for comparisons between countries and regions. In Statistics Explained, readers will find a plethora of statistical articles on a wide variety of topics, effectively forming an encyclopedia of European Union statistics. Each article is supplemented with embedded links either to glossary entries defining and explaining concepts or to background articles with additional contextual or methodological information. The Statistics Explained main page highlights the most recently added or updated articles, as well as a list of the current ten most visited articles. Readers who are particularly unfamiliar with statistics may want to check out the "Statistics 4 Beginners" section for a five-part primer on statistical concepts and uses. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

From the Galerie de l'UQAM at the University of Quebec at Montreal comes 150 Years 150 Works (150 Ans 150 Oeuvres), a virtual exhibition of "works that have in some way shaped or changed...[Canada's] history over the past century and a half." This virtual exhibition, which is available in French and in English, features one artwork created in every year between 1867 (Jean Paul Lemieux Charlottetown revisitee) and 2016 (Kent Monkman's The Daddies). These selections are culled from a number of "major museums, university galleries, and private collections" across Canada. As explained on the exhibition's homepage, visitors may explore this exhibition in a variety of ways. Those interested in exploring the art chronologically can do so via a timeline that runs vertically along the left side of the exhibition's homepage. Alternatively, visitors can also explore this collection through four themes: Representing history, Making history, Expanding history, and Reopening history. Each selection is accompanied by a short description and information about where the artwork is held. [MMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

One hundred years have passed since the ending of World War I, "the war to end all wars." In the October 2018 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, American author William Vollmann travels to the former front lines of the Great War and asks, in a nod to Erich Maria Remarque's famous novel, if all is still quiet on the western front. Vollmann's long-form essay weaves together historical events, references to primary historical documents and secondary interpretations, and his own experiences at battle sites and conversations with local residents a century later. The result is a lengthy and meditative "attempt at remembrance," intriguingly described by Vollmann as "peculiar, accidental and limited," which brings readers to battle sites in eastern France and reflects on myriad perspectives on the war throughout history. Vollmann is the author of Europe Central, winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction. This article also features photography by Tomas van Houtryve, an award-winning documentary photographer based in Paris. [JDC]

Comment on or rate this resource

How Did We Can? is an online exhibition curated by the National Agricultural Library (NAL) that "document[s] the progression of canning practices in the United States during the 20th century." The exhibit draws on NAL collection materials including books, articles, reports, and a multitude of images. The exhibition has five sections: Canning techniques; Consequences of improper canning; Evolution of canning equipment; Canning through the world wars; and Home canning: post World War II to present. Some of the most interesting materials explore disasters that can occur during canning. The page on oven canning, which was a popular method prior to World War II, did not require a water bath and did not heat up the kitchen as much. Oven canning was deemed unsafe in the mid-1940s, and the page features images showing shrapnel from jars that broke in the oven, and even a blown-off oven door. More horrors can be found in the Consequences of improper canning section, from split cans to botulism outbreaks. For twenty-first century canners, the full text of the 2015 edition of the USDA's Complete Guide to Home Canning is provided. [DS]

Comment on or rate this resource

In honor of the upcoming US election on November 6, we've decided to revisit this collection of teaching materials from Teaching Tolerance. This resource was originally featured in the 10-28-2016 issue of the Scout Report, which was a special edition focused on voting.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act is an essential part of U.S. voting history and a milestone for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Teaching Tolerance has compiled this collection of classroom activities and resources to help middle school and high school students better understand the circumstances behind the passage of the Voting Rights Act and its significance. These resources include video footage of Lyndon Johnson signing the act into law (part of NBC's archival footage collection), a succinct summary of the key points of the Voting Rights Act, and powerful graphs that show the number of black legislators in the south (1868-1900 and 1960-1992) and the percentage of registered voters in black voting-age population. This website also features resources related to contemporary debates surrounding voting rights in the 1965 law, including information and materials relating to the 2009 and 2013 Supreme Court challenges to the Voting Rights Act. [MMB]

Comment on or rate this resource

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a set of recommendations describing how to produce websites that are more accessible for people with disabilities and that work well across a range of devices. These guidelines specify the minimum levels of contrast between text and background colors necessary for pages to be easily readable. The WebAIM Color Contrast Checker provides an interactive tool to check a given pair of colors. The tool also allows users to interactively adjust the lightness of their provided colors, updating the computed contrast ratio automatically as changes are made. The resources block on the top right of the page provides links to detailed technical descriptions of how colors are checked. For more technical users, the Color Contrast Checker can also be used as a REST API. An example of API usage is provided at the bottom of the page. The WebAIM Color Contrast Checker works in any modern browser. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource

ScreenStudio is screen recording software with support for live streaming. Users may add text overlays to the recordings that they've produced and can also place images from their webcam into an inset. The instructions section of the ScreenStudio site includes a detailed reference manual. A 15 minute video tour of ScreenStudio's features is also available. The ScreenStudio YouTube channel contains a variety of tutorials and demos; some demonstrating features of ScreenStudio, others using ScreenStudio to record demos for other things (e.g., installing a new printer in Ubuntu Linux, creating fillable PDFs). Production versions of ScreenStudio are available for macOS and Linux computers. An experimental Windows 10 version can also be downloaded. ScreenStudio is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available for download alongside the installers. [CRH]

Comment on or rate this resource