The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 8

In February of 1969, less than one year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., black students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "propelled by longstanding grievances and fresh flashpoints, called for a campus-wide student strike until administrators agreed to 13 demands." The roughly two-week protest that followed was joined by both black and white students and "was among the largest in university history." To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of this historic event and reflect on its impacts, the university created this website, which incorporates archival photographs, digital storytelling, and recent oral histories recorded with six of the strike participants. Readers will also find an interactive timeline that traces events leading up to and immediately following the strike, beginning with the unjust expulsion of 94 black college students in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in November 1968 and ending with the university faculty agreeing to establish a Black Studies Department on March 3, 1969. For educators, links to a teaching kit and other relevant resources are provided. This digital project was produced in partnership between University Communications and Marketing, the campus Black Cultural Center, and The Black Voice, a student-led publication. [JDC]

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Educators and STEM professionals alike may be interested in Skype a Scientist, a program that "matches scientists with classrooms around the world ... for 30-60 minute Q and A sessions that can cover the scientist's expertise or what it's like to be a scientist." This innovative program offers students an opportunity to video chat with an actual scientist, and it gives scientists an excellent avenue to practice their public communication skills and inspire interest in their work. When signing up to be matched, groups can choose among more than twenty different types of scientists, including biologists, computer scientists, astronomers, and social scientists, and the program also strives to highlight diversity within the STEM community. For those seeking resources to help prepare for their session, this website also has links to teaching resources (including a middle school lesson plan) and to science communication resources. Skype a Scientist was founded in 2017 by Sarah McAnulty, a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut specializing in squid microbiology. As of this writing, Skype a Scientist has connected more than 4,600 scientists in over 40 countries with 9,600 classrooms around the world. Skype a Scientist also hosts live sessions that anyone can attend via YouTube. [JDC]

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Fans and scholars of British history may appreciate Connected Histories, a nonprofit project that enables its visitors to conduct sophisticated web searches through more than two dozen digital history databases and archives simultaneously. Spanning the years 1500 -1900, examples of the resources in Connected Histories include British Museum Images (with nearly 100,000 images related to early modern Britain), the Convict Transportation Registers Database (containing government records on more than 123,000 convicts who were transported to Australia between 1787 and 1867), and the Newton Project (an online edition of Sir Isaac Newton's complete published and unpublished writings). Visitors may also want to check out this project's guides, which offer brief discussions and search strategies for using Connected Histories to research nine different areas of history, such as parliamentary history, family history, and searching for images. While most of the resources in Connected Histories are free for everyone, a few require subscriptions or are only free in the UK. Connected Histories was created collaboratively by the University of Hertfordshire, the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, and the University of Sheffield. Launched in 2011, Connected Histories occasionally continues to add new content. [JDC]

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The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM Center) is a nonprofit initiative that "provide[s] resources and technical assistance for educators, parents, students, publishers, conversion houses, accessible media producers, and others interested in learning more about AEM." Here, readers will find a wealth of well-organized information and resources for accessible education. Those new to AEM should start with the About AEM section, which contains introductory materials such as quick start guides organized by audience. Parents and educators should check out the Supporting learners section, where they will find information organized by age group beginning with early learning up through workforce development resources for adults, as well as a directory of AEM contacts for each state. Additionally, the Navigating AEM section provides helpful overviews of the many AEM options available. Those interested can also subscribe to the AEM Connector, a quarterly email newsletter "highlighting the best and brightest resources, products, and services from the AEM Center and from our partners and colleagues in the field." The AEM Center is led by the Center for Applied Special Technology, an independent, nonprofit education research and development organization in Massachusetts that focuses on Universal Design for Learning. [JDC]

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The Art UK website allows visitors to see digital copies of over 200,000 artworks from over 3,250 British museums and collections. Many of these works are not physically on display, making the website the access point to this large unseen percentage of art. Works digitized by Art UK span several centuries, from a 2nd century AD Roman fresco of a bird with cherries at the Victoria & Albert Museum to four stitched portraits created by the artist Sorrell Kerrison in 2017 and 2018. These portraits were commissioned by the Bolton Museum and Art Gallery in Manchester, and there's a short video detailing Kerrison's process of researching the subjects and stitching the portraits. Art UK is publicly funded and partners include the BBC, Oxford University Press, the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, Culture 24, the Visual Geometry Group at Oxford University, and the University of Glasgow. Art UK's project for 2019 is documenting and digitizing UK sculptures. [DS]

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The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology has been studying past and present human cultures since it was founded in 1901, and in that time it has collected more than 3.8 million objects from around the world. In May 2018 the Hearst Museum launched its digital portal, enabling researchers and the public to explore over 700,000 items (as of this writing) in its vast collections. Here, readers can access that portal and browse featured collections such as Yoruba Ibeji figurines from Nigeria and folk items from the Western Balkans, and also filter their results by fields such as collection place, culture or time period, and function. For those interested, background information on the museum's collections, organized largely by continent, can be found below the collections portal link. Part of the University of California, Berkeley, the Hearst Museum's vision is "to build a fuller understanding of all cultures based on respect, interest, and empathy." [JDC]

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Audio aficionados who like to learn about humanity may be interested in the Sapiens Podcast, which bills itself as "a podcast for everything human." Produced by House of Pod and part of Sapiens, an online anthropology magazine featured in the 7-28-2017 Scout Report, this educational and thought-provoking podcast is hosted by Chip Colwell, Esteban Gomez, and Jen Shannon, all anthropologists who work as curators in Denver, CO. In each approximate half-hour episode, they are joined by other anthropologists from around the world as they delve into topics "to help us uncover what makes us human." As of this write-up, recent episodes include explorations of how immigrants become accepted members of their new societies, quinoa's complicated past and present for Peruvian farmers, and what it might mean when space becomes a human place. Each episode's page is accompanied by a link to related Sapiens articles and outside resources. In addition to streaming online, listeners also can subscribe to the Sapiens Podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms. [JDC]

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Educators and anthropology scholars at multiple levels may be interested in the Teaching and Learning Anthropology (TLA) journal, a peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal that published its inaugural issue in fall 2018. This journal publishes "analytical, reflective, and review articles" on the pedagogy of anthropology, as well as "original undergraduate and graduate anthropological research and writing." Topics covered in TLA's first issue include assessing outcomes for a university-level course integrating anthropology and biology, using Excel to help students synthesize academic research literature, and a graduate student's reflections on dealing with skepticism and information literacy while teaching biological anthropology. TLA also shares and publishes a variety of teaching resources on their website, including lesson plans, instructional tips, and film clips. These resources are organized by sub-discipline, topic, and material type, and also include a few resources in Spanish. TLA is supported by the General Anthropology Division and the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, both of which are sections of the American Anthropological Association. Its editor-in-chief is Angela Jenks, Assistant Teaching Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. [JDC]

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Readers interested in anthropological research conducted by scholars worldwide should check out Deja Lu ("Already read"), an initiative of the World Council of Anthropological Associations. This open-access journal is effectively an anthology of scholarship curated by the editors of peer-reviewed anthropology journals published around the world, with the aim of "pluralizing the dissemination of anthropological knowledge on a global level." Launched in 2013 and currently in its sixth issue, Deja Lu republishes scholarly articles on any anthropological topic, giving its readers a unique opportunity to access a cross-section of diverse research in one place. While many of the articles are fully available in English and most have had their abstracts translated into English, some are only available in their original language of publication. Articles that have been fully translated into English can be found in the Translations section. One example of a translated article is a study originally published in the Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology examining how the Boorana, a society in Ethiopia, preserve and construct their own history without a written language. [JDC]

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Anthropology educators and lifelong learners looking for low-cost teaching materials may be interested in Perspectives, a free textbook published by the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) in 2017. Describing itself as "the first peer-reviewed open access textbook for cultural anthropology courses," Perspectives was written with high schools and introductory undergraduate courses in mind. Each chapter was written by a different anthropologist representing colleges and universities across the US and Canada. The book takes a holistic approach to cultural anthropology, and its chapters are designed to either be used collectively or to stand alone so that instructors can choose only the sections they need. Embedded within the book are links to web resources to supplement readers' learning, and additional teaching resources are available on the book's website, including a series of brief video lectures introducing major anthropology topics and "reflections on the importance of anthropology from well-known members of our discipline." Those interested may download the entire book as a PDF or EPub, or they may download PDFs of each chapter individually. SACC is a section of the American Anthropological Association. [JDC]

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We originally featured Navigating the Green Book in the 2-5-2016 Scout Report, and this resource is still a wonderful way to learn about an important aspect of African-American history.

Between 1936 and 1967, a black postal worker from Harlem named Victor Green published an annual directory known as the Green Book. In it, Mr. Green listed businesses that would gladly (and safely) serve African-American travelers, including hotels and restaurants, nightclubs and bars, beauty salons and gas stations. Here, readers will find an inspiring new project from the New York Public Library that engages public domain collections of the Green Books. Readers may browse covers from the 1947, 1948, 1955, 1956, and 1960 issues, explore the digital collection itself, or map a trip using aggregated data from a number of the books. This last feature offers the most creative way to navigate the Green Book. After entering a starting point and a destination, the program uses data from the original guides to visualize where black travelers would have been allowed to stop for a drink, buy gas, eat at a restaurant, or sleep. For readers interested in the history of discrimination in the United States, these excellent resources will pay big dividends.

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