The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 48

The 1939-40 World's Fair in New York City was the second largest World's Fair in U.S. history, second only to the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri. The fair's theme was "Building the World of Tomorrow," and exhibitions featuring modern appliances marked major changes in U.S. culture. The fair, which originally featured pavilions from sixty foreign countries (including Poland and Czechoslovakia), was also profoundly impacted by the start of World War II. This online exhibit from the New York Public Library allows visitors to explore this historic event through essays (authored by a range of scholars), archival materials, and online galleries. Topics addressed in this exhibit include the role of women in the 1939-40 World's Fair, dance performances, and a sculpture entitled The Harp by Augusta Savage. The sculpture was strongly influenced by James Weldon Johnson's 1900 song Lift Every Voice and Sing. [MMB]

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From the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in Saint Louis comes Religion & Politics: a publication dedicated to issues at the intersection of religion and politics. Authored by scholars and journalists alike, Religion and Politics features essays, interviews, reports, book reviews, and more. Visitors can browse articles by subject, such as bioethics, civil liberties, law and order, and media. This publication includes a section entitled The Table, which includes multiple essays that respond to a single controversial issue in the news, such as the death penalty and immigration reform. This section may especially appeal to social studies or religious studies instructors in search of resources for classroom discussion. The RAP (religion and politics) Sheet links to news articles in popular news magazines that may be of interest to Religion & Politics readers. [MMB]

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Originally featured in the 01-18-2013 Scout Report, we've decided to re-feature the BEN Portal: a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For almost two decades the BEN Portal, which stands for BiosciEdNet, has sought to provide "seamless access to e-resources, but to also serve as a catalyst for strengthening teaching and learning in the biological sciences." Today, the BEN Portal (which has also been affiliated with the National Science Digital Library since 2005) features publications from over thirty organizations, including the AAAS, the American Physiological Society, the Biotechnology Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and much more. Visitors are invited to conduct a text search in this collection or browse materials by subject. In addition, educators can browse teaching strategies by classroom level (K-12 educators; college faculty). The BEN Portal features both free resources and resources that require a subscription: users have the option to limit search results to free resources. [MMB]

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University of Iowa historian Colin Gordon is the author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City: a book that investigates how Saint Louis changed during the twentieth century. In his research, Gordon utilized archival records as well as GIS techniques. He also created this series of four interactive maps as a companion to this book. Each of these maps illustrates a different phenomenon that shaped Saint Louis: white flight; laws and policies that deliberately created racial segregation; municipal zoning laws; and laws and policies that fit under the umbrella of "urban renewal." Each of these four maps includes a timeline accompanied by a short explanation, which allows visitors to learn how certain policies and laws impacted demographic trends. This website may especially appeal to educators of U.S. history, legal history, and urban studies. [MMB]

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Goodwill Industries and the Goodwill Community Foundation (GCF) offers this series of free online tutorials related to math skills including basic operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, and basic algebra. These resources may especially appeal to teachers and tutors who work with elementary and middle school level students as well as Adult Basic Education (ABE) learners. Each tutorial uses words and pictures to explain the concepts behind each math skill. Next, learners are invited to try out some practice problems and take an assessment to test their skills. As GCF notes, these tutorials are, "designed to be like a math workbook, so you can practice what you learn directly from the lessons and learn at your own pace." As a result, these tutorials may be especially helpful for instructors who teach in multi-level adult education classrooms or library media centers. [MMB]

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From the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), "the recognized authority on light pollution," comes this collection of educational resources. These resources, which are mostly designed for children in elementary and middle school, include materials designed by the IDA as well as materials created by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. They include word searches, crossword puzzles, readings, and hands-on activities centering on the consequences of light pollution. For high school educators, this collection also includes a PowerPoint and full lesson plan addressing this issue. Many of these materials may also appeal to those who work in educational settings such as museums, libraries, and enrichment programs. [MMB]

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New Roots: Voices from Carolina del Norte is a collaborative oral history project from the Latino Migration Project, the Southern Oral History Project (housed in Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and UNC Chapel Hill University Libraries. This collection features over 160 interviews with North Carolinians who immigrated to the state from Latin America. This collection includes interviews conducted in English and Spanish. Visitors can browse this collection by North Carolina county, the interviewee's country of origin, year of the interview (2011- present), or theme. Tagged themes include adult education, DREAMers and DACA, identity, migratory experience, and receiving communities, to name just a few. For social studies, Spanish, and ELL instructors, these interviews offer a rich classroom resource. As of this write-up, this project also includes three lesson plans designed to facilitate student exploration of and reflection on some of these interviews. [MMB]

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From KQED's fabulous Above the Noise team (who we featured in the 05-19-2017 Scout Report) comes this helpful video and accompanying lesson plan designed to help students and educators alike understand online privacy issues. Issues addressed in this lesson include "threat modeling" (a technique that helps users access their online privacy priorities), data brokers, encryption, and advice about creating a secure password. This lesson is designed for middle school or high school-age students and aligns with Common Core English Language Arts & Literacy standards. On this page, educators can download the lesson plan for free and check out a number of related resources. [MMB]

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The Last Word on Nothing is a group blog authored by some of the world's top science writers. The blog's name originates from a Victor Hugo quote: "Science says the first word on everything and the last word on nothing." In the spirit of this quote, the team behind The Last Word on Nothing seeks to explore scientific topics with "curiosity and humility." In one recent blog post, Craig Childs explores the budding field of archaeoacoustics, which examines sound in archaeological contexts. In another blog post, Emma Marris describes her experience eating an "impossible burger" (a veggie burger made with wheat and yeast that is genetically engineered to taste more like beef) and discusses the work and legacy of agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, who developed disease-resistant wheat. The Last Word on Nothing is updated almost daily, and visitors can browse previous posts by author or by subject. [MMB]

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Launched in 2003, Narrative is a magazine "dedicated to advancing literature in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging reading, as the gateway to understanding, across generations, in schools, and around the globe." The magazine offers an extensive free, online digital library of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, authored by famous and emerging writers alike. Authors and poets in the Narrative library include Wendell Berry, Saidiya Hartman, Mark Twain, Danez Smith, Ha Jin, and many more. In addition, the collection includes interviews with authors including Margaret Atwood, Lorrie Moore, Jennifer Egan, and others. Each year, the magazine sponsors a number of writing contests for emerging writers, including one for high school students. Contest winners are included in the magazine's library, offering readers a chance to discover new writers as they browse the collection. To access the Narrative library, readers will need to register for a free account. [MMB]

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Originally aired on January 24, 2017, this PBS American Experience episode about marine biologist and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson is currently available for online streaming. This two-hour episode traces Carson's biography, describing her Pennsylvania childhood, her graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University (which she was forced to abandon in order to financially support her family), her work at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and her eventual decision to pursue nature writing full-time. The episode also discusses the introduction and widespread use of DDT during the 1940s and '50s and explores shifting public perceptions of science during the dawn of the atomic age. These shifting perceptions informed reactions to Silent Spring, which sparked a robust public debate and governmental action about DDT safety after its 1962 publication. This documentary is accompanied by a number of related resources that may be of interest, including a short film in which scientists and historians discuss the ongoing debate about DDT and malaria. [MMB]

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The JHI Blog is the official blog affiliated with the Journal of the History of Ideas, an academic journal dedicated to intellectual history. The blog is currently edited by an international team of graduate scholars and authored by a number of contributing scholars. The JHI Blog mainly publishes short essays (between 600 and 1,500 words) about issues related to global intellectual history. In addition, visitors will find book recommendations and companion pieces to scholarly articles published in the Journal of the History of Ideas. Recent posts include an exploration of Napoleonic furniture, the spread of "fake news" in early modern Europe, and the history of the "super villain" in comics. [MMB]

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The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) offers this digitized collection of almost 4,000 works of art that were part of the German Expressionist movement. This collection features prints, illustrated books (which can be viewed in full), periodicals, and more by artists including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, Russian artist Vasily (Wassily) Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Each work of art is accompanied by a short description and cataloging information about the piece. Visitors can search for artwork via MOMA's DADABASE (which visitors will find in the related links section of any individual item in the collection section). In addition, MOMA offers a number of other ways to browse this collection, offering exhibits based on style, themes, and techniques. In addition, visitors can explore works via an organized map or timeline (in the chronology section), which provides historical and social context to items in this collection. [MMB]

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Pulp fiction played a central role in twentieth-century literature and popular culture. Launched in 2011 by University of Pennsylvania English professor Patrick Scott Belk, the Pulp Magazines Project allows visitors to explore pulp magazines that are currently in the public domain. This collection includes titles published between 1900 and 1940, including The Argosy (considered to be the first pulp magazine), Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine, and The Green Book Magazine. The Pulp Magazines Project features original essays, along with outside resources and archival material that provide additional context into pulp magazines and their impact. For instance, in the contexts section of this website, visitors will find a 1938 article originally published in Scribner Magazine about "The Love Pulps," which the magazine terms "the escape literature of three million maidens." [MMB]

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The National Park Service offers this collection of essays focusing on U.S. LGBTQ history. Many of these essays examine the role of place and space in LGBTQ history. For instance, in one essay, Susan Stryker highlights the "places that matter" in transgender history. Other essays describe places connected with specific individuals, such as the home of activist Pauli Murray in Durham, North Carolina and the residence of Bayard Rustin in New York City. Visitors interested in helping to preserve and recognize places important to LGBTQ history will want to check out the "What Can You Do to Get Involved with the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative?" section. Here, visitors can add landmarks to an interactive map or provide additional information about existing landmarks. As of this write-up, the map features community centers, co-ops, bars, and other places that have a place in LGBTQ history. [MMB]

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The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents this encyclopedic, A-Z look at the women whose works are represented in their collection. For each woman, there's a short biographical entry with a portrait and links to exhibitions at NMWA that featured their work, as well as selected pieces in the collection. For example, painter Alice Neel's entry outlines her tumultuous path, late-in-life recognition, and links to her painting, T.B. Harlem, 1940. The picture is of one of her neighbors, Carlos Negron, who is suffering from tuberculosis, or T.B., but it's not really a portrait of Negron. Instead, it points out the poverty and untreated illness in Spanish Harlem at that time. Photographer Berenice Abbott's portrait (taken by Hank O'Neal in New York City in 1979) shows her dressed in a coat and knit cap. Like all good reference works, the NMWA serves as a starting point that will get viewers interested in finding out more about the women artists it lists. [DS]

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Jekyll is a static website generator that includes support for common blog features, such as post categories and permalinks. It takes a folder of text files written in a lightweight markup language and renders these to HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Out of the box, Jekyll understands Markdown, Textile, and Liquid markup. Support for other formats (e.g., ReStructuredText) are available as plugins. The created sites can be hosted using any generic hosting service and do not require any special software on the web server to work. Jekyll is also the software that powers the GitHub Pages hosting service, which can be used to deploy Jekyll-generated sites for free. Jekyll requires a Ruby interpreter to run. Apple includes Ruby with macOS and installers are available for Windows and most UNIX-like operating systems. [CRH]

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In order for the web content that we produce to reach the widest possible audience, web accessibility should be considered. Furthermore, many institutions are legally required to produce accessible content. aXe is an open-source accessibility auditing library that checks a page against the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and the Section 508 US federal procurement standard. After analyzing a page, the aXe browser extension provides a detailed list of potential issues. For each issue, it lists the problematic snippet of HTML, a description of the potential issue and its severity, and guidelines for fixing the issue. The aXe browser extension is available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. [CRH]

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