The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 37

Travelers of both the armchair and in-person varieties, as well as weather enthusiasts, may appreciate Weather Spark, a wonderful website that offers detailed summaries of "the typical weather anywhere on Earth." From the home page, readers are invited to enter a location in the search bar or to choose among major cities such as Hong Kong and Chicago, and they can also search via an interactive map or view a randomly selected place. Each location in Weather Spark's database has a vast amount of information concisely presented through colorful graphics and text descriptions, including average temperatures, humidity, solar energy, and much more, with reports available for a yearly, monthly, or daily timeframe. Visitors can also compare the average weather for multiple locations simultaneously. Made with a global user base in mind, Weather Spark allows visitors to display temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius and can be viewed in eight languages in addition to English. The reports provided here are primarily "based on a statistical analysis of historical hourly weather reports and model reconstructions from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2016," and links to their other data sources are included. Weather Spark is the creation of Cedar Lake Ventures, a small company based in the Minneapolis area. [JDC]

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Elementary-level science teachers who would like to incorporate art as a means of engaging their students in STEM topics may want to check out this lesson plan published in June 2019 by Science Friday. Created with students in grades 3-5 in mind, this standards-aligned lesson uses science comics as the foundation for "a multi-day series of activities which can be used to build science illustration and reading skills around any topic." In the first activity, students analyze a science comic series or graphic novel in small groups and discuss a series of provided questions. In the second activity, students work on developing their own comic styles by designing elements such as a color scheme and lettering style, and for the third activity, students apply their chosen comic style as part of the learning assessment for their instructor's STEM topic of choice. Links to numerous resources are provided, including "examples of science comics as well as empirical evidence of the positive impact that comics can have on science learning." This flexible lesson plan was created by Joshua Kettle and Ashley Mills, who are science teachers at Oakham Primary School in England, and by science illustrator Karen Romano Young. [JDC]

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STEM educators, administrators, and others with an interest in STEM education research may want to check out the Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education, or CADRE for short. Describing itself as "a network for STEM education researchers," CADRE is a project led by the nonprofit Education Development Center to support researchers funded through the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) program. Here, CADRE shares the findings, publications, and output materials created by hundreds of DRK-12 research projects on various aspects of STEM education, as well as resources for early career researchers and prospective grantees, creating a wealth of valuable content. Visitors may like to begin by looking through the Projects, which can be filtered and browsed by target audience (e.g. informal educators, preservice teachers), products (e.g. curriculum, database), project focus (e.g. mathematics, accessibility), and project type (e.g. qualitative, case study). Additionally, the Early Career section provides a collection of resources on topics like writing for publication and building professional networks, while the Resources section offers helpful toolkits on writing NSF proposals, project management, and disseminating research, as well as a large collection of spotlights on various STEM topics. [JDC]

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As this report from the National Academies Press notes, "One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it." Requested by the US Congress in response to concerns about scientific rigor, the consensus study report Reproducibility and Replicability in Science was published in May 2019. This report "defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research," and it also "provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science." Interested readers can view the entire 218-page report online or download it as a PDF at the link above for free. Readers will also find a number of supporting resources that may be of interest, such as a flier entitled "10 Things to Know About Reproducibility and Replicability," report highlights tailored for social and behavioral scientists, and an hour-long recorded public briefing webinar featuring a discussion with several of the report's committee members. [JDC]

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Philosophy @ the Virtual Art Museum uses works of art to inspire classroom philosophical discussions for high school students. The website is made up of six units: Portraits, Landscapes, Expressionism, Abstract Art, Conceptual Art, and Photography. Every unit contains three or four related works of art, each accompanied by a series of thought-provoking questions. For example, the portraits section includes portraits like John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Madame X, 1884 and Kehinde Wiley's Michael Borges Study, 2008, with questions such as, "What strikes you about this portrait?" and suggestions for asking students how knowing the gender of the sitter, the context of the picture, or the sitter's relationship to the artist might change their view of the portrait. Each unit is available as a printable PDF, which should prove especially helpful to teachers. Under More, visitors can also find links to additional resources, such as Standford Online Encycolpedia of Philosophy articles and podcasts on relevant topics. Philosophy @ the Virtual Art Museum was created by Tom Wartenberg, an emeritus philosophy professor at Mount Holyoke. The site can be viewed in Spanish, Chinese, and German, as well as English. [DS]

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Educators looking to celebrate Constitution Day on September 17 in their classrooms (or other important dates in American history) should be sure to check out the array of educational resources provided by the National Constitution Center. Here, visitors will find a large collection of resources with options for a variety of age groups. Students and general audiences alike have several interactive features to explore. In addition to the Interactive Constitution (featured in the 10-10-2014 Scout Report), other interactives focus on topics like how the Bill of Rights was written, how the rights laid out in the US Constitution compare to those established in other countries around the world, and digitized early drafts of the Constitution as it was being developed. Other notable features include numerous lesson plans for K-12 classrooms as well as fun craft activities that would be appropriate for both classrooms and families. These resources, as well as the many others available here, can be searched by fields such as keyword, subject, grade level, and educational standards. Located in Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center has been educating visitors about the US Constitution online since 1998 and in person since 2003. [JDC]

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"Can representative democracies be strengthened to govern more effectively?" This is the question that the Social Science Research Council's (SSRC) Anxieties of Democracy program has been exploring. In the Democracy Papers, a series in the SSRC's digital publication Items, readers will find essays that "highlight and summarize new research presented at conferences and workshops related to the Anxieties of Democracy program." Written with general audiences in mind, these essays feature the work of experts such as professors and postdocs, as well as university students, and tend to focus on various aspects of democracy in North America and Europe. For example, one recent student contribution by Jenny W. Xiao of the University of Hong Kong examines Slovakia's 2019 presidential election and highlights three lessons from Zuzana Caputova's unexpected victory. Another recent article comes from Jason M. Roberts, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who explains his data-driven research on measuring the effectiveness of party leadership within the US Congress. These and the numerous other essays in the Democracy Papers offer readers insights into current social science research on democratic institutions. [JDC]

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Readers interested in accessing data on national legislative bodies from around the world would do well to check out New Parline, the open data platform of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This resource "allows you not only to find information on national parliaments but also to compare the data for all parliaments or a particular region." Visitors can search for a particular country and legislative chamber from the main page, and they can also explore several ready-made visual comparisons on topics like how different countries' parliaments are structured and what percentage of their membership is made up of women. Those interested in creating their own comparisons can choose among a variety of aspects, including the average age of all members, electoral system, and the number of laws adopted by parliaments per year. Users can download the data and visualizations from New Parline, and the site is available in both English and French. Established in 1889, the IPU describes itself as "the global organization of national parliaments," and as of this write-up has 179 parliaments in its membership. [JDC]

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Social studies educators who would like to discuss the 2011-2012 Arab Spring uprisings in their classrooms, as well as anyone curious to learn more about these social movements, may be interested in this collection of resources curated by the Middle East Studies Center (MESC) at Portland State University as part of their Middle East Teaching Tools site. At the link above, visitors will find numerous helpful articles, videos, lesson plans, and more. Teachers and students will want to peruse the Background Information tab, where they will find links to more than two dozen thoughtfully selected resources, such as an interactive timeline, research guides, and videos. The Media & News tab reveals links to many additional videos, audio clips, and multimedia exploring various aspects of the democratic revolution that will be of interest to educators and general audiences alike. Finally, the Teaching Materials tab leads to a large number of lesson plans and other teaching resources. While this collection was assembled with K-12 educators in mind, college instructors may also find its contents helpful. Established in 1959, MESC is the "first federally supported undergraduate program for Arabic language and Middle East area studies in the nation." [JDC]

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This report published by the Pew Research Center examines views on how democracy is working from residents of 27 countries around the world. Released in April 2019, this report is based on Pew's Spring Global Attitudes Survey of 30,133 people conducted between May 14 and August 12 in 2018. While the opinions expressed about each nation's democracy varied considerably, the report found dissatisfaction regarding the performance of democratic systems in many countries and concluded that "most believe elections bring little change, that politicians are corrupt and out of touch and that courts do not treat people fairly." However, those surveyed are generally "more positive about how well their countries protect free expression, provide economic opportunity and ensure public safety." The report's analysis goes into further detail for each global region and includes numerous charts showing the results for individual nations. Those interested can read the full 61-page report online, or download it as a PDF at the link above, and the survey's topline questionnaire results are available as a PDF as well. This report was written by Pew researchers Richard Wike, Laura Silver, and Alexandra Castillo. [JDC]

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Atom's developers describe it as "a hackable text editor for the twenty-first century." The core Atom editor comes with the standard suite of features most users expect in a programmer's editor: an integrated filesystem browser, version control integration, code auto-completion, multi-pane editing, and syntax highlighting for several dozen programming languages. But there are also over 8,500 add-on packages to contribute other capabilities. Among the currently featured packages are teletype (adding collaborative simultaneous editing), hydrogen (adding interactive code execution and debugging), and scroll-through-time (modifying two-finger scroll to move through time instead of space). Atom ships with four user interface themes, with more than 2,900 others available for download. Atom itself is an Electron application, built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with plugins and themes written in those same technologies. The Atom website provides installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. Many Linux distributions also include Atom in their official packages. Atom is free software, distributed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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Shotcut is a cross-platform video editor with native support for a wide variety of formats, which allows video files to be opened and edited directly without the need to import them. This cuts back on the risk of potentially losing information in the process. In formats that support Shotcut, users have access within files to various resolutions and frame rates among different video segments. Shotcut also includes both video and audio filtering effects, a full list of which can be located on the video editor's website Features page. In the Tutorials section, users can locate a number of instructional videos on topics like "Getting Started," "Cross-fades and Transitions," "Film Restoration," and more. Shotcut is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License. The Download section of Shotcut's website contains installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, along with source code downloads. [CRH]

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We originally featured iCivics in the 12-04-2015 Scout Report and, since then, this wonderful resource has added many new teaching units and online games that this site well worth visiting again.

Founded by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2009, iCivics aims to provide "students with the tools they need for active participation and democratic action, and teachers with the materials and support to achieve this." All the resources on this site are free with a one-step sign up that only requires an email address, and iCivics is also integrated with Google Classroom. Readers may like to begin by exploring the sundry resources housed in the Teach section, which include more than 20 Curriculum Units on important topics ranging from Foundations of Government to the Legislative Branch. These resources can be searched by content or by educational standards. Within each unit readers will discover detailed lesson plans. For instance, the International Affairs unit reveals lesson plans on Diplomacy, Conflict and Cooperation, International Influence, and International Organizations. Readers should also check out the Play section, where they will find over 20 online educational games where players can (for example) become part of constitutional history in Race to Ratify and imagine themselves as president in Executive Command.

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