The Scout Report - January 26, 1996

January 26, 1996

A Publication of Internet Scout
Provided by the InterNIC as a Service to the Internet Community

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report

Send comments and contributions to: scout@cs.wisc.edu

NCSA Science for the Millennium
Science for the Millennium, provided by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), is a Multimedia Online Expo. The Expo is a beautifully designed virtual museum of science and industry which will be of interest to students and others with an interest in science and computing. Users have access to three pavilions: Science and Industry, Collaboration, and Computation, as well as the Online Science Theatre. Exhibits include Whispers from the Cosmos, Spacetime Wrinkles and The Metacomputer. The Online Science Theatre offers MPEG and QuickTime movies on many of the same topics discussed in the pavilions. Science for the Millennium is a highly graphical site and some of the files will take a while to download, but your patience will be rewarded.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Expo/
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Supreme Court Oral Arguments Online
Unedited Oral Arguments before the Supreme Court offers audio files of complete oral arguments before the Supreme Court in landmark cases. The site currently includes: United States v. Nixon (executive privilege - 1974); Roe v. Wade - 1973; Griswold v. Connecticut (Planned Parenthood challenging a Connecticut law that declared counseling married persons on the use of contraceptives a crime - 1965); and Pennsylvania v. Casey (informed consent and 24 hour waiting period for abortions - 1992), among others. Background information, the constitutional question, the conclusion, and the vote are provided for each case. Selected cases include hypertext links to the actual opinions. The arguments are in RealAudio format. Professor Jerry Goldman, a political scientist at Northwestern University, created the site and states it is the beginning of an ambitious project to digitize 400 hours of audio files.
http://oyez.nwu.edu/
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NASA STI's STAR
NASA's Scientific and Technical Information Program (STI) has made its journal, Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR), available on the Web. Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports is an abstract journal, listing citations with abstracts for aerospace-related reports obtained from worldwide sources. It is published bi-weekly and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical (STI) Database. Documents include NASA contractor and grantee reports, NASA-owned patents and patent applications, other government, university, and private reports, and domestic and foreign dissertations. It also contains subject term and personal author indexes. STAR can be found along with other STI documents and indexes, such as STI Bulletins, Aerospace Medicine and Biology, Aerospace Engineering, and the NASA video catalog. A freely available Adobe Acrobat reader is required to read the publications. Download the reader from Adobe through the link at the STI site or visit the Adobe Acrobat download page at the URL below.
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/sti-pubs.html
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
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An Electronic Field Trip to the United Nations
An Electronic Field Trip to the United Nations: PBS and Turner Adventure Learning (TAL) have introduced a home page designed to complement their upcoming electronic field trip telecast to the United Nations. Titled "Conflict Resolution in the Global Village", the field trip offers teachers and students the opportunity to examine the techniques used by world leaders to achieve and maintain peace. The Web page, located on PBS ONLINE, offers the following resources to all Internet visitors: an area to send in questions to UN experts; classroom activities covering UN-related issues; background information on the UN; details on UN peace-keeping operations; links to UN-related Web sites. There are still openings for the formal electronic field trip on February 8-9. For subscription information, educators can visit the web site or send email to fieldtrips@pbs.org.
http://www.pbs.org/tal/un/
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ThinkQuest and CyberFair school contests
ThinkQuest Contest: The Global SchoolNet Foundation is looking for several places in the United States to give *free* workshops in February and March '96 on how teachers, students, and non-profit educational organizations can enter the ThinkQuest Contest, which offers prizes of cash and scholarships. The aim of ThinkQuest is to encourage students (USA, grades 7-12), along with their coaches to build "Educational Tools for The Internet", including Web sites, that will make their favorite subjects more exciting. Unlike other forms of communication, the Internet is participatory and fosters collaborative learning. The ThinkQuest Contest will inspire the production of quality Web pages that will show how students can experience an entirely new way of learning. The "Internet Style" emphasizes exploration, collaboration, and exploitation of the information on the Internet and the World Wide Web. To learn more about ThinkQuest, see the Web site below, call Global SchoolNet Foundation at 1-800-61-THINK, or send email to gfitz@cerf.net.
http://www.thinkquest.org/

"CyberFair 96: Share & Unite" will be showcased as part of the Internet 1996 World Exposition, modeled after the great world's fairs at the turn of the 20th century. This is an international, project-based, Internet learning activity that is open to all schools (grade levels K-12) in all countries. International CyberFair participants will create curricular content for use by students around the world by showcasing their local communities via the World Wide Web. Participating schools will be asked to conduct a research project involving community resources and to publish their project on a Web site. In addition to the incredible learning experience, every school that participates will receive a "thank you for playing" prize donated by businesses who believe the Internet can positively impact education. Complete information on CyberFair 96 is available at the Web site.
http://www.gsn.org/cf/index.html
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Advanced Placement English discussion list
The aim of the Advanced Placement English (AP-EngLit) forum is to encourage discussion of teaching methods and to share curriculum through the exchange of ideas between professionals in the secondary English field all over the world. The participants in the forum: English teachers, curriculum coordinators, department heads, student teachers, and other professionals from the field of secondary education interested in preparation of students for the annual Advanced Placement Examination in English Literature and Composition, administered by the Educational Testing Service for the College Board. The subjects discussed in the forum: The teaching of literature (originally in English or in translation) at the advanced secondary level or any other issues in this field. Collegiality between participants is valued above scholastic debate. This listserv has no affiliation with either Educational Testing Service or The College Board.
To subscribe, send email to:jax@windsor.vegs.together.org
in the body of the message type:
subscribe AP-ENGLIT yourfirstname yourlastname
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The White House
One of the top sites on the Web just got better. "Welcome to the White House", the official Web site of the Executive Branch, has been completely redesigned and upgraded to incorporate new features. The site offers interesting content for everyone, including children, students, and adults. The Interactive Citizens' Handbook allows searching for government information by entering a question in plain English such as "how do I find out about my social security benefits." The answer will be returned to you from the appropriate government computer, but what's great is that you don't need to know which computer -- amazing even for an Internet site. In other words, you don't have to know how the government is organized in order to get answers to your questions. In addition, a directory organized by subject lets you browse what's available on topics important to you. The President's weekly Saturday radio addresses are available in audio format and are searchable by keyword, allowing you to immediately listen to the parts of the speech that address the topics of interest to you. In the Virtual Library and the Briefing Room you can browse and search the full text of White House documents and speeches, and subscribe to the publications mailing list to receive White House publications on a daily basis, just like the press. Tours offer biographical sketches and portraits of all the presidents, and even more interesting, all the first ladies. All inaugural addresses are also available. "Art in the White House - A Nation's Pride" displays the tremendously rich collection of American arts and crafts on display in the White House, and tours of the Old Executive Office Building and the First Lady's sculpture garden, which most Americans never get to see, are included. Socks leads a tour of The White House for Kids section, including a bit of history about the children and pets who have lived there, and "Inside the White House", a quarterly newsletter just for kids. The entire site is graphically rich, and what's really handy is that it senses what kind of Web browser you are using and automatically displays the version that is compatible with your browser. And all information is easily accessable to those with slower connections through the "Text version" link on every page.
http://www.whitehouse.gov
Text only: http://www2.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welcome-plain.html
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State of the Union Address in audio format
President Clinton's State of the Union Address can be read and heard (via RealAudio) at the new Whitehouse Web site. On the page you will find the speech, as well as a "statistical snapshot" of where America is today, background to the address, and more information on each of the seven major challenges made in the address
http://www2.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/other/stateunion-top.html
Text Page: http://www2.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/other/stateunion-top-plain.html
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State of the Union Archive
If you are interested in what past presidents have said in their State of the Union Addresses, try Northwestern University's valuable State of the Union Archive gopher. It offers the full text of all State of the Union Addresses from Harry Truman's in 1946 to Bill Clinton's in 1995. Also included are five selected Addresses from Franklin D. Roosevelt.
gopher://www.polisci.nwu.edu:70
or gopher to: www.polisci.nwu.edu
select State of the Union Archive
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The New York Times is online
The New York Times has opened a Web site which includes much of the content of the daily newspaper. Topics include: Today's Front Page, Sections, News by Category, searchable Classifieds, and user interactive "Forums" on such issues as the future of newspapers, the press and politics, and international affairs, among others. Also featured is a "CyberTimes" section, with the latest news on computer and Internet developments, as well as a "New York Times Navigator", with pointers to sites used most often by Times reporters. Domestic users may use the service free of charge after registering. Foreign users must subscribe. The richly graphical site is also offered in a low graphics format.
http://www.nytimes.com/
Low graphics: http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/textpath.html
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Sundance Film Festival
Sundance is the official site of Robert Redford's project to develop new talent and support independent filmmakers. The site has a direct link to the Sundance Film Festival, which features a daily report, a section on this year's films, getting around, information on past festivals, and a message from Mr. Redford. Sundance also has a filmmaker focus, presently featuring Atom Egoyan, and a connection to the Sundance Channel, with information about a new 24 hour, commercial free film TV channel. The site is richly graphical, so if you have a slow connection go directly to the Film Festival address which offers the same content.
http://www.sundance.org/
Sundance Film Festival: http://www.sundance.org/festival.html
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Chainguard - Online: Bicycle Advocacy
Chainguard online is a site devoted to bicycle advocacy information. It is dedicated to "increasing bicycle advocacy publicity and locating and uniting cycle advocates." It links to other major bicycle advocacy pages sorted by geographic area, as well as to conferences, an article on the top ten bicycle commuting cities, and Internet Backroads, a list of cycling mailing lists and Usenet news groups.
http://chainguard.org/index.html#mainindex
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Listserv List Reference
The Listserv List Reference is a great source for finding information about any of the over 7,500 public listservs on the Internet. It is a Web interface to LISTSERV Lists database at L-Soft International. Lists can be browsed by host site, country, and size if the list subscription exceeds 1,000. Subscriber numbers are kept up to date. Subscription information is provided, as is each list's configuration. While this site is used extensively by list owners, it also provides useful information to potential subscribers to Listserv lists.
http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html
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Mulitlingual Internet Glossary
Netglos is a multilingual, alphabetical glossary of Internet terms from alias to WWW. Each term is followed by a short definition. If other terms are used in the definition, hypertext links are provided to those terms. Presently the glossary is available in English, French, and Norwegian. It is under various stages of construction in other languages including German, Spanish, and Chinese, and is planned for Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese, and Hebrew. Netglos is a voluntary, collaborative project by a number of translators and other professionals. It is hoped that this work will make a modest contribution to the "multilingualization" of the Net and will add to the growing list of multilingual Internet resources. Contributions are welcome and will be acknowledged.
http://wwli.com/translation/netglos/netglos.html
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

The Scout Report - January 26, 1996

January 26, 1996

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions