The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 3

In the seventeenth century, Margaret Cavendish authored popular plays, poetry, and fiction, as well as a number of oft-overlooked works of natural philosophy. In 1740, Emilie Du Chatelet published Institutions de Physique, a work that was widely circulated at the time. Despite their contributions, Cavendish, Du Chatelet, and other women philosophers are often overlooked in courses about Early Modern Philosophy. Project Vox is an ongoing initiative by scholars, librarians, and students at Duke University to educate the public about the contributions of these female philosophers and to provide philosophy instructors with resources to integrate these philosophers into the classroom. Visitors may want to start by browsing this website's timeline, which provides basic biographical information about major female philosophers alongside an overview of intellectual and political developments in early modern Great Britain and France. More detailed information about four philosophers - Cavendish, Du Chatelet, Anne Conway, and Damaris Cudworth Masham - can be found under the Philosopher tab. Here, visitors will find a more detailed biography of each philosopher, along with extensive primary and secondary source guides to their work and links to online resources. The Project Vox team is also working to create a set of teaching guides for each philosopher, so stay tuned. [MMB]

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PeerJ is an open access, online publication that includes two peer-reviewed journals as well as a "preprint server" called PeerJ Preprints. The two journals are PeerJ, a journal of biology and medicine, and PeerJ Computer Science. A large, international team of expert scholars edits both journals, and new articles are published frequently. Visitors can browse for past articles by a number of Subject pages (e.g. Animal Behavior, Marine Biology, Virology) or conduct a search to find research of interest. Meanwhile, PeerJ Preprints allows users to submit a draft or abstract for unpublished articles or posters in order to share recent research or get feedback. While this unique section of PeerJ may appeal to certain science researchers and graduate students, the two peer-reviewed journals will be of interest to a broader community of scholars and students alike. [MMB]

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From the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges comes the Open Course Library, an extensive collection of courses and course materials (such as syllabi, classroom handouts, readings, multimedia resources, and assignments) for use by college-level students and instructors. As the authors of this website emphasize, these materials are not intended to replace classroom instruction. Rather, these materials are made available in order to provide affordable classroom materials for students and resources for faculty members to consider integrating into existing courses. A central stated goal of the Open Course Library is to reduce costs to students; all courses included here can be taught without a textbook or utilize textbooks that cost $30 or less. As of this write up, the Open Course Library features over 80 courses, including courses in English composition, symbolic logic, mathematics, and foreign languages. All course materials can be easily accessed as Google Docs. [MMB]

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Created by public history students at Kennesaw State University, Hollywood Goes to War is a multimedia exhibit highlighting the role that Hollywood played in the U.S. homefront during World War II. Visitors can explore the exhibit through a variety of themes, including American Society, Censorship & Conflict, WWII Films, and Film & Memory. As this exhibit illuminates, the U.S. government viewed film as an important influence on both national and international perspectives of the United States during the war. In 1941, the U.S. established the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP), which evaluated the portrayals of the United States and other nations. These evaluations, in turn, influenced a film's international distribution. In the exhibit, visitors can read the BMP's report of Casablanca, which notes that "the film presents an excellent portrait of the spirit of the underground movement." Other exhibit items include a video clip of Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 address to the Academy Awards, a 1942 newsreel featuring enlisted servicemen Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart, and a number of film posters and photographs. In addition, high school educators can find an extensive teacher's guide by selecting the For Teachers link on the homepage. Meanwhile, researchers can find additional primary source material via the For Scholars link. [MMB]

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The Virginia Department of Health created this extensive data portal in order to "provide a convenient access point for health-related data for Virginia." This data, which is presented via a number of accessible maps, interactive infographics, and tables, can be browsed by categories including Demographics, Health Behavior, Maternal & Child Health, and Drinking Water. This data collection will be of interest to public health researchers and instructors alike. The level of detail of this data, combined with its user-friendly presentation, make it an excellent research tool to incorporate into a health or social science classroom. While all included data is specific to the state of Virginia, the universal import of the issues addressed here gives this portal a broader appeal. This webpage also contains a helpful resource list of Other Sources & Reports from the Virginia Department of Health. [MMB]

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Learnhigher is a UK-based organization that seeks to foster "the development and dissemination of high quality, peer-reviewed resources for learning development in the higher education sector." With financial support from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Learnhigher seeks to be a "One Stop Swap Shop" for educational resources developed by educational institutions across the UK. Here, educators will find study guides, classroom handouts, websites, podcasts, and classroom activities designed to help instructors support college students in developing a number of skills, including research, academic writing, and collaborative learning. Many of these resources are intended for classroom use, including helpful study guides for writing, a handbook to help students approach academic reading, and in-class activities to facilitate student reflection on their time management skills. Other resources are intended to help college-level instructors reflect on their current curriculum and pedagogy practices and learn new approaches. For example, instructors can check out Top 10 Tips on Deterring Plagiarism or view slides from a professional development workshop on assessing student work. Instructors can browse these resources by topic, including Research Skills, Writing at University, and Employability. [MMB]

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From biology teacher Shannon Muskopf's extensive website for biology teachers and students, Biology Corner, comes this collection of lesson plans, classroom activities, and PowerPoint presentations related to Ecology and Environmental Issues. Guided by a student-centered pedagogy, many of these lessons include in-class simulations or online virtual labs. For example, in the lesson Estimating Population Size, students learn how biologists capture and mark select animals in order to gauge their population via an online Biology Corner simulation or by simulating the measurement process using beans, beads, or pennies. Meanwhile, another classroom activity uses cards to help students evaluate how predator and prey relationships shift over time. Other topics addressed in these lessons and activities include biomes, random sampling, "designer" dogs, and human population growth. These lessons can be easily downloaded as PDFs and incorporated into life science or biology classrooms or in community-based learning settings. [MMB]

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The Disability History Museum is a digital museum that strives to "foster a deeper understanding about how changing cultural values, notions of identity, laws and policies have shaped and influenced the experience of people with disabilities, their families and their communities over time." A project of the educational media organization Straight Ahead Pictures, the Disability History Museum contains an extensive collection of materials relating to disability throughout nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century U.S. history. These materials, which are drawn from a number of contributing museums and libraries, can be browsed through the Library tab. Here, visitors can browse the collection Topic List (e.g. Civil Liberties & Rights, Women & Gender, Diagnoses & Diseases) or Keyword List (e.g. American Braille Press, Medicare, War of 1812) and filter their results by document type or date. This collection features numerous photographs, articles, speeches, reports, and more that illustrate both the experiences of individuals with disabilities throughout history as well as changing social and political conceptions of disability. In the Education section, instructors will find resources to incorporate disability history into their classrooms, including seven complete lesson plans. (At the time of this write-up, the Exhibition tab is "in development;" however, the rest of this website is fully-functioning.) [MMB]

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Radio Garden is an extraordinary new website that allows visitors to listen to over 8,000 live radio stations from around the world. Created by Jonathan Puckey with financial support from the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision, Radio Garden utilizes a number of open sourced technologies and the contributions of radio stations from around the globe. As Jonathan Puckey explains in a recent interview with NPR, the project emerged when the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision approached Puckey about creating a museum exhibition for a recent, multi-university European research project called Transnational Radio Encounters. Puckey and his team decided to create this website instead. By clicking the above link, visitors will automatically be taken to the Live portion of this website and will be directed to the radio station closest to their current location. From here, visitors can explore other stations around the globe via an interactive map. When visitors select cities with multiple participating stations, a list will appear on the right side of the browser, allowing visitors to choose which station to listen to. By selecting the History tab or Jingles tab, visitors can explore historic radio broadcasts and station jingles from across time and space. Finally, the Stories tab features a number of moving interviews with individuals about the role of radio in their lives. [MMB]

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For those who enjoy poetry and discovering new poets, Scout Poetry is an online magazine that provides short, yet substantial, reviews of new poetry publications. Edited by poets Kathleen Ossip and Spencer Short, Scout Poetry features reviews of a diverse selection of chapbooks from a number of publishers. Each review centers on the author's themes and poetic techniques. The reviewers at Scout Poetry have a knack for selecting a piece of verse to quote in each review, which allows readers to get a sense of each poet's style without exceeding the magazine's 400 word review limit. The brevity of each Scout Poetry review is intentional; the editors write, "By stripping away personal politics, by tamping down voice, by taking away the freedom (or compulsion) to say everything, we hoped to arrive at something different, modest, useful. A guide. A marker. A simple heuristic. A scout." [MMB]

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Starts With a Bang! is a blog "dedicated to exploring the story of what we know about the Universe as well as how we know it, with a focus on physics, astronomy, and the scientific story that the Universe tells us about itself." Created by astrophysicist Ethan Siegel and authored by Siegel and a team of scientists, Starts with a Bang! features short news analyses, podcast episodes, and answers to queries from readers in the regular "Ask Ethan" column (recent questions include "What's the deal with the speed of light?" and "Why doesn't the Earth's atmosphere turn sunlight into rainbows?") Most of these blog posts break down new physics research, along with complex astronomy concepts, in ways to make them accessible to members of the general public. To do so, Siegel utilizes photographs, diagrams, bulleted lists, and a straightforward, engaging writing style. In recent posts, Siegel explores the significance of new research from the Arecibo Observatory and explains why we are unlikely to detect dark matter. [MMB]

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"Imagine a time with no computers but with lots of craftsmanship and creativity," poses the tagline of the website Design is Fine, History is Mine. Created by a design history instructor from Germany, Design is Fine, History is Mine showcases gorgeous - and sometimes unusual - works of design throughout history. Here, visitors can examine the colorful, bold carpets of Swedish textile designer Josef Frank; an eighteenth century British coffee pot designed to look like a pineapple; and a photograph of the "Blickensderfer 6," a portable typewriter crafted in 1906. Frequently updated, Design is Fine, History is Mine currently contains hundreds of fascinating items. Visitors can browse these items by century or decade (the collection also contains items pre dating the fifteenth century, which visitors can browse by using the tabs titled B.C and A.D., respectively); by designer; by item type (e.g. abstract art, graphic design, tea & coffee); and more. [MMB]

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Between 1991 and 1992, researcher Deborah Chambers of the University of Western Sydney interviewed 34 women who had lived in or near the areas of Blacktown and Penrith during the 1950s, both part of the Western Sydney region in Australia. During this time, the population and infrastructure of Western Sydney grew rapidly. On this website, visitors can learn about the women involved in this project, listen to recordings of their interviews (or read the transcripts of these interviews), and explore related material, including photographs of participants and correspondence between the participating women and the research team. All women involved in this project were in their twenties during Western Sydney's population boom, and their stories highlight how these women experienced these massive social changes. Prior to the suburbanization of Western Sydney, many of the women interviewed lived in houses that they had helped their families build, and some lacked modern appliances and telephone service. In these interviews, women reflect on how their daily lives changed as they saw their communities shift from rural area to suburban center. [MMB]

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Software engineer Cameron Beccario created this website which allows visitors to view a "near real-time visualization of global weather conditions." Using data from a number of sources, including the Global Forecast System (GFS), the Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real-time (OSCAR) database, Real Time Global Sea Surface Temperature (RTGSST) analysis, and more, Beccario has designed an animated, interactive globe. Visitors can choose from a variety of Modes (Air, Ocean, Chem[ical], and Particulates) in order to view near real-time model information. Within each Mode, visitors may also select from a subset of the model's data (e.g. In the "Air" mode, visitors can choose to view Wind data or Temp[erature] data, among other options.) Visitors can also adjust how they view these global models using the Projection or Overlay options. [MMB]

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From the New York Historical Society comes this online exhibit of John James Audubon's watercolor illustrations of birds, which appeared in his work Birds of America, published between 1827 and 1838. This website accompanies a three part exhibit at the New York Historical Society, which showcased Audubon's work in chronological order. Visitors can explore this collection in a variety of ways. Visitors new to Audubon's work may want to start with Explore, where one can view paintings that Audubon composed of specific species, annotated with insights about Audubon's artistic process. These annotations centers on Audubon's later work, which was featured in Part III of the exhibition. Visitors interested in Audubon's earlier work can view select materials from Parts I and II of the exhibition through a series of links on the right side of their browser. Meanwhile, visitors can view the entirety of the Historical Society's collection (including materials featured in all three exhibit installations) in the Gallery. Another highlight of this website is the Video section, where visitors can view a captivating ten minute video that places Audubon's paintings alongside footage of the bird depicted in the painting. Finally, those wishing to learn more about how the birds that Audubon depicted sound in nature can do so through Bird Calls. [MMB]

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Online since 2009, The Sporkful is the creation of Dan Pashman, presented in partnership with NPR-affiliate WNYC. The tagline for The Sporkful is "it's not for foodies, it's for eaters," and can be consumed in a variety of ways, all calorie-free, as long as you only partake of the digital versions. Visitors can head for the website to browse and listen to the approximately 30-minute podcasts there; the current episode is "The Great Office Coffee Election" documenting Myiesha Gordon's efforts to get better coffee into the offices at WNYC, by organizing a taste-off of eight different brands. Readers can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple iTunes, and of course, there's a WNYC app that features The Sporkful. The website also links to videos by Pashman, such as "Behold the ORIGINAL Veggieducken, Your Meatless Thanksgiving Centerpiece Dish," a video portrait of a dish created by Pashman using winter squash, leeks, and sweet potatoes, so that vegetarians would have "a large, time-consuming, centerpiece-worthy dish to prepare at the holidays." [DS]

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Word Counter is a free tool that allows users to quickly analyze a piece of text. Initially created in 2009 as a simple word count tool, the team behind Word Counter has since added a number of features that will be of interest to writers and instructors alike. Today, Word Counter measures not only the number of words in a text, but also measures sentence length, keyword density, estimated reading level, and estimated reading time. Users can find out this information by simply pasting any amount of text into a text box. Word Counter is a useful tool for writers looking to avoid repetition or for instructors interested in the reading level of a specific text. (Of course, no estimated reading level assessment is perfect. The team behind Word Counter includes an explanation of how reading level and reading time are calculated, so users can use this tool in an informed way.) [MMB]

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Tally is a free iOS application with a very straightforward purpose: it allows users to quickly tally numbers by simply tapping on the screen. Users can also create multiple tallies at once by swiping their screens to the right and can save tallies to their iCloud account or email, or text their tallies to anyone. Finally, Tally allows users to "count" in increments of any number (e.g. by twos or sevens.) So why use Tally? Users may find this app helpful in classroom settings or in meetings as an easy way to track participation. Others may want to use this app while playing board or card games. [MMB]

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