The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 40

Those with an interest in Victorian history and culture should check out Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy, a new website from the Royal Collection Trust that launched in August 2019 in honor of Albert's 200th birthday. This resource features over 17,500 digitized documents and photographs, most of which have never been published before. Albert is best known as Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Consort who died prematurely in 1861. This project highlights Albert's lasting influence on British culture and society. For example, the Collections section offers ample evidence of Albert's patronage of the arts. This included photography, which was then more commonly thought of as a scientific tool rather than an art form and medium for documenting history, as Albert saw it. Also featured here is the art of Raphael, who Albert so admired that he collected prints and photographs of the Renaissance master's almost entire body of work, intending the collection "for public good, rather than private enjoyment, and as a resource for students." The Explore section offers visitors "specific themes, biographies, and media that further contextualizes Albert's life and times," including visual essays and an interactive timeline. This ongoing digitization project is slated to make approximately 23,000 items available online by the end of 2020. [JDC]

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Readers interested in African American history, as well as those studying or working in a higher education setting, may be interested in this informative digital exhibition from the University of North Carolina (UNC) University Libraries. Grown from a University Archives digitization project, Slavery and the Making of the University seeks to "introdu[ce] materials that recognize and document the contributions of slaves, college servants and free persons of color primarily during the university's antebellum period." Readers should begin by reading the Introduction section, which gives an overview of the creation and contents of the site. Next, visitors can read about The College Servants, Campus Incidents, Writings & Speeches on Slavery, and more. Most sections of the website feature digitized primary documents, with links to finding aids or information about accessing the original sources, and there is also a downloadable Walking Tour of the UNC-Greensboro campus. The site is searchable via a search bar in the upper right corner, and users can filter by query type and record type in a drop-down menu. An Advanced Search feature is also available. The exhibition was compiled by Assistant University Archivist Susan Ballinger, Research Assistant Janis Holder, and University Archivist Bari Helms. [EL]

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Published in February 2019 by the National Academies Press, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty is a consensus study report compiled at the request of the US Congress with the goals of "conduct[ing] a comprehensive study of child poverty in the United States [and] identify[ing] evidence-based programs and policies for reducing the number of children living in poverty by half within 10 years." The report first examines the demographics and consequences of child poverty, as well as how factors like the labor market and government programs affect it. It then thoroughly reviews and analyzes multiple policy approaches to addressing child poverty before recommending two policy packages that the committee's analysis found would be capable of meeting the goal of halving child poverty within a decade. Those interested can read the full 598-page report online or download it as a PDF for free at the link above, where it is also available to pre-order in hard copy. There are also a number of supplements available under the Resources tab, including a 4-page summary, highlights specifically for policy-makers, a short video introduction, and a 34-page report addressing poverty among Native American children. [JDC]

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Educators in history and social studies may be interested in this collection of primary source documents provided by the National Archives through their educational platform DocsTeach (see the 5-23-2014 Scout Report). This particular collection focuses on historical turning points during the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1969-1977 with the aim of encouraging students to think critically about them. In the Featured Teaching Activities section, readers can choose among six classroom activities created by education teams at the National Archives, the Nixon Presidential Library, and the Ford Presidential Museum. Activity topics range from Nixon's roles in the Cold War and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to Nixon's pardon by Ford, his successor as president. On the Primary Sources side, readers can explore digitized documents and photographs organized into topics such as President Nixon's Trip to China, Ending the War in Vietnam, and President Nixon's Resignation. Activities and primary sources in DocsTeach can be shared with Google Classroom, and teachers can also create, save, and share their own activities on DocsTeach by creating a free account. While this resource was compiled with educators in mind, any reader with an interest in this period of history will find much to contemplate here. [JDC]

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Fans of vintage advertisements should check out this striking collection of historical posters digitized by the Library of Congress. This collection features over 900 posters created for the Work Projects Administration (WPA; originally called the Works Progress Administration) between 1936 and 1943, a Depression-era federal jobs program initiated to relieve unemployment and improve infrastructure. Originally created "to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia," these posters and their now-iconic design styles are valued for both their aesthetics and their history. Readers may like to begin by reading the About section to learn about the collection's contextual background before diving into the Collection Items. Once there, readers can choose to view the posters as a list, gallery, grid, or slideshow, and they can also filter the posters by fields, such as location and subject. In the Articles and Essays section, readers can browse Collection Highlights curated to "demonstrate the breadth and depth of the collection and the styles and content used by the WPA." This section also features a Federal Art Project Calendar created in 1938 as well as a 1994 interview with Tony Velonis, a master silkscreen printer who introduced the process into the WPA poster division. [JDC]

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From the folks behind the popular YouTube channel SciShow (featured in the 8-29-2014 Scout Report) comes SciShow Space, an educational and entertaining video series dedicated to "explor[ing] the universe a few minutes at a time." The channel tackles all manner of space-related topics, ranging from pop culture-inspired questions like "Could the Firefly Universe Exist?" to explanations of "How Tech Designed for Space Is Saving Lives on Earth." SciShow Space also regularly updates its viewers on the latest astronomy research through its weekly Space News videos, which recently covered and explained topics such as: "We Found Water on a Habitable Zone Exoplanet," and "A Baby Planet May Have Once Smashed Into Jupiter." In addition to Space News and the channel's other weekly feature, Space Dose, its home page offers several playlists of older videos that may also be of interest. These include Great Minds, which highlights the contributions of scientists like Katherine Johnson and Robert Goddard, and What's It Like On..., which explores other worlds such as the planet Neptune and its largest moon, Triton. Launched in April 2014, SciShow Space is hosted by Hank Green, Caitlin Hofmeister, and Reid Reimers. [JDC]

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From the Esri Story Maps team comes Around the World in Seven Spaceports, a virtual tour of some of Earth's most important rocket launch sites. The story map opens with a brief introduction, pointing out that "the world's spaceports play an important role in your everyday life," due to the satellites launched there, as well as the work of researchers on board the International Space Station. It also provides a brief explanation of why most of the world's launch sites are located near the equator, before moving on to visit individual spaceports. The tour begins with NASA's well-known Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, then stops at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, from which the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957 and the first human in outer space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. Other stops on the tour include the European Space Agency's Guiana Space Center in French Guiana and Rocket Lab's Launch Complex One, a new commercial spaceport in New Zealand that primarily launches cubesats. Throughout the photo-filled tour, visitors should keep an eye out for links to view videos of rocket launches from each featured spaceport. [JDC]

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Both beginning and seasoned amateur astronomers, as well as casual stargazers, may find this Astronomy Reference Guide from Sea and Sky to be a helpful resource. Here, visitors will find a plethora of information to help budding astronomers get started, such as an extensive FAQ page covering the basics of various celestial bodies and astronomy in general, as well as a glossary of astronomical terms. There is also a quick guide to different types of astronomy equipment and a digital Messier Catalog of Deep Sky Objects, which explains where to find 110 of the most well-known galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters. For those who are a little deeper into this fascinating hobby, Sea and Sky's overview of different astronomy software may come in handy, and astronomers at all levels can make use of Sea and Sky's detailed calendar of upcoming celestial events that extends (as of this write-up) to the year 2030. Sea and Sky is the work of J.D. Knight, a Florida-based graphic artist and web designer by trade and an astronomy enthusiast who created this website "for the sole purpose of bringing the splendors of the seas and the wonders of the universe to members of the Internet community." [JDC]

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While astronomy and other sciences may be commonly viewed as having little to do with poetry, this lesson unit from ReadWriteThink provides a pathway to combine them. Created with students in grades six to eight in mind, this standards-aligned lesson unit is designed to take place over approximately three weeks, concurrent with an astronomy unit. Over the course of the Astronomy Poetry lessons, students "listen to and discuss poetry that pertains to the study of astronomy and write their own poems to enhance their learning of the subject." Several supplementary resources are available to download, including a sample handout reviewing different poetry forms, a short overview of the poetry writing process for students, and a list of suggested books containing astronomy-themed poems. It also includes a suggested final project for the unit in which students create booklets of their own poetry using ReadWriteThink's free online Printing Press tool. Although this lesson unit uses astronomy as its model, educators who would like to try a cross-disciplinary approach to engage their students should feel free to modify and adapt it to incorporate other disciplines and content areas. This lesson plan was written by Che-Mai Gray, a middle school literacy teacher in Marysville, Washington. [JDC]

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In March 2019, the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications created this collection of scientific articles "highlight[ing] research on volcanism and the presence of (water-) ice across planets and rocky bodies of our Solar System," curated from its last several years of publications. Here, readers will find 14 articles on the search for evidence of water and volcanic activity on various terrestrial bodies in our solar system, all published in Nature Communications between June 2015 and November 2018. The collection is organized into two sections, with the first section containing eight articles related to water (both past and present) on bodies such as Mars and the Moon. The second section features six articles and travels a bit farther afield to investigate the role of volcanism in the geologic histories of Mercury, the asteroid Ceres, and Saturn's moon Enceladus, among others. As of this write-up, all but one of the articles in this special collection are open-access, so anyone curious can peruse some of the scientific literature on the ongoing explorations of our solar system for free at the link above. [JDC]

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We last featured this resource in the 2-23-2018 Scout Report, and this collection of teaching materials continues to provide K-12 educators with well-developed classroom activities sure to engage students interested in space travel.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has created this series of K-12 curriculum materials that align with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These materials are designed to help young scientists understand the Engineering Design Process used at the Jet Laboratory and to use this process to participate in engineering themselves. Instructors can browse this collection by four grade levels: grades K-2, grades 3-5, middle school, and high school. Each activity in this collection features a short video that demonstrates JPL engineering in action. These videos are accompanied by a detailed, hands-on activity, available via a link in the Use it in the Classroom section. For instance, one activity for students grades 3-5 features a video about the Opportunity rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2004. In this video, rover driver Hallie Gengl describes how the team must take Mars's terrain into account when planning a drive. Next, students create their own rovers out of pasta, using the same design and planning principal they learned about in the video.

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