Theme: Reader Favorites
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Beautiful News Daily
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Social studies |
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A reader favorite that was also popular with the Scout staff, Beautiful News Daily lives up to its name in more ways than one. Its aesthetically pleasing visuals make the site stand out among other data and news projects, and its focus on a daily dose of positivity offers a welcome break from gloomy news cycles. Readers may also enjoy following the project on Instagram or Twitter (@beautifulnews.daily and @beautiful__news, respectively).
Many of us strive to stay well-informed of local and international events, but sometimes the news can be stressful or discouraging. To help counterbalance this, the data visualization website Information is Beautiful recently embarked on a new project, Beautiful News Daily. As its name implies, this project offers its visitors "a collection of good news, positive trends, uplifting statistics and facts, all beautifully visualized." New graphics are posted each day over the course of the project's one-year lifespan, which aims "to move our attention beyond dramatic news headlines to the slow developments and quiet trends that go unseen, uncelebrated." Readers can browse all of the Beautiful News items on the project's main page, and they can also filter them by category. Each item's page includes a brief summary, and below readers will find links to view the data in spreadsheet form and to see the source that inspired the chart, as well as a link to a relevant organization for those who would like to get involved. All of the images created for Beautiful New Daily are covered by a Creative Commons license and can be used and shared freely. Information is Beautiful was founded by David McCandless, a London-based writer, designer, and artist.
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Open Textbook Library
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Educational Technology |
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Each year the Scout Report features a variety of materials designed for educators and students. Amid an impressive array, Open Textbook Library was a clear favorite. The resource is committed to curating no- and low-cost textbooks for a variety of academic subjects. With a plethora of titles for both STEM and Humanities classes, the collection makes education more accessible to educators and students across academic concentrations.
The University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library provides educators, students, and lifelong learners an excellent resource for finding high-quality digital textbooks. Here, visitors will find a large collection of openly-licensed textbooks that can be downloaded for free as PDF or e-book files. The books come from multiple authors and publishing organizations, and cover a wide range of academic areas, including the humanities, natural and social sciences, and mathematics, as well as medicine and law. For visitors curious about the effectiveness of a particular volume, many of the books in the Open Textbook Library also include detailed reviews written by faculty and instructors. In addition to reviews, the landing page for each textbook typically shows its table of contents, a brief description of the book and of its intended audience, and information about its authors, so that readers can better decide whether they should download it. The Open Textbook Library is maintained and supported by the Open Textbook Network and the Center for Open Education, which are also based at the University of Minnesota.
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Weather Spark
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Science |
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The Scout Report strives to highlight a variety of strategic yet simple-to-use tools. As an engaging platform for tracking weather patterns, Weather Spark was a reader favorite that fit the bill. The site is perfect for practical planners and meteorology enthusiasts alike. And, with useful data and gadgets tracking weather patterns all around the world, the resource is especially great for trip-planning.
Travelers of both the armchair and in-person varieties, as well as weather enthusiasts, may appreciate Weather Spark, a wonderful website that offers detailed summaries of "the typical weather anywhere on Earth." From the home page, readers are invited to enter a location in the search bar or to choose among major cities such as Hong Kong and Chicago, and they can also search via an interactive map (linked below the city list) or view a randomly selected place. Each location in Weather Spark's database has a vast amount of information concisely presented through colorful graphics and text descriptions, including average temperatures, humidity, solar energy, and much more, with reports available for a yearly, monthly, or daily timeframe. Visitors can also compare the average weather for multiple locations simultaneously. Made with a global user base in mind, Weather Spark allows visitors to display temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius and can be viewed in eight languages in addition to English. The reports provided here are primarily "based on a statistical analysis of historical hourly weather reports and model reconstructions from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2016," and links to their other data sources are included. Weather Spark is the creation of Cedar Lake Ventures, a small company based in the Minneapolis area.
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Standard Ebooks
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Language Arts |
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Literature-focused resources are often highly regarded by Scout subscribers. From Shakespeare to Thoreau, Standard Ebooks' "e-shelves" are full of literary treasures that brought delight to our readers. Their mission resonated too, as the site is committed to maintaining modern, consistent, and attractive versions of classic text, all within the public domain.
While free public domain books can be readily downloaded from resources like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, those wishing to read these finds on an e-reader or mobile device may be somewhat frustrated by their formatting or mistakes in transcription. This sentiment is the inspiration behind Standard Ebooks, "a volunteer driven, not-for-profit effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks." Some of the ways Standard Ebooks strives to improve their source material include proofreading and correcting typos and ephemera, editing the typography and design for consistency, and updating the formatting to meet current e-book best practices such as tables of contents and popup footnotes. As of this write-up, more than 300 titles are available, including L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, and P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves Stories. Visitors can browse Standard Ebooks' full library in order of newest additions, author name, reading ease, or length (using the "Sort by" filter at the bottom of the page to adjust browsing selections), and each e-book is available in four different file formats. Those interested in participating in this project should visit the Get Involved section to learn how.
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