8/10/06
Geography is more than places on a map. It's global connections and incredible creatures. It's people and cultures, economics and politics. And it's essential to understanding our interconnected world.But sadly, our kids aren't getting enough of it. Without geography, our children aren't ready for the world.
My Wonderful World is a National Geographic-led campaign—backed by a coalition of major national partners—to expand geographic learning in school, at home, and in the community. We want to give our kids the power of global knowledge.
6/9/06
Wabanaki Studies Commission Invites Educators to Participate in the
Summer Institute on Wabanaki Studies
What A five-day summer institute on Wabanaki studies will be held at the University of Maine in Orono. This is the third institute to focus on preparing educators to teach all Maine students (K-112) about the Wabanaki people. As an annual event, the institute will serve to support educators in the implementation of Public Law 291, Chapter 403 (known as LD 291). Summer 2004 was the mandated time for schools to begin this instruction.
When the institute will be held all day Monday through Friday, August 7-11, 2006.
Why Educators need support and resources as they teach about the Wabanaki people. As a result of the institute, it is anticipated units of learning will be developed by participants to assist other educators.
Who Maine educators at all grade levels – including teachers, staff involved in curriculum development, and educational technicians – are encouraged to attend the institute. We would also request pre-service to attend. Those seeking the middle level highly qualified educators can receive credit by successfully completing the institute.
Credits Continuing education credits (CEUs), three credit audit, three undergraduate credits, or three graduate credits will be awarded for those who successfully complete the institute.
Contact To receive an institute registration form, contact Wabanaki Studies Commission, by writing to 5706 Aubert Hall, University of Mainr, Orono, ME 04469-5724; by calling/leaving a message at 581-4450; or by sending an email to: Julie.nowell@umit.maine.edu
4/4/06
Perfect Disaster
http://dsc.discovery.comA good way to sum up this site might be as follows: Typhoons, thunderstorms, and hurricanes, oh my! The Discovery Channel has created this engaging and not-so-subtle website to complement one of their recent programs, and it certainly will hold users' attention. The site is divided into a number of sections, including one that includes a number of historic disaster puzzles. Here, visitors can piece together the post-eruption locale of Pompeii and the mighty tornado that swept through Kirksville, Maryland in 1899. In an area of the site that is quite informative, visitors can learn about the Fujita Tornado Scale, which classifies tornadoes based on their estimated wind speeds. Finally, the "Anatomy of A Disaster" area allows users to enter a virtual tornado and learn about the dangers of solar-storms. Not for the faint of heart, this site brings heightened drama to some already hair- raising forces of nature.
Sacred Destinations
http://www.sacred-destinations.comAround the world, there are thousands of sites that hold great importance to the world's different faiths and religions. It would be quite a task to document all these sites, but Holly Hayes (a graduate student in religious history) has created this website to serve as a destination for those persons who might like to learn a bit about such places. Currently, the site contains information on more than 1500 sites, and visitors can peruse these locales at their leisure. The sites are organized by country and category, and of course, visitors can also search the entire site as well. The categories theme is a good way to start browsing, as it contains Buddhist temples, Jewish museums, sacred mountains, and Shinto shrines. No such site would be complete without a substantial offering of photos, and this site has visitors covered all the way from St. David's Cathedral in Wales to the Hagia Sophia.
Virtual Vaudeville
http://www.virtualvaudeville.comVaudeville lives and breathes again on this tremendously interesting website created with the support of the University of Georgia Research Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Utilizing a team of researchers and computer visualization experts, the project has created 3D simulation of a complete act by the vaudeville-era comedian Frank Bush. Of course, visitors should first watch this remarkable act, then proceed to other sections where they can learn about the technology used to develop this recreation, and of course, about the age of vaudeville itself. On the site, visitors can also learn about the "Live Performance Simulation System", which is the prototype used to create this impressive experience. Given all of the fascinating material on the site, many visitors will want to make a few return visits to soak up the whole experience.
Economic History Services
http://eh.netDespite its reputation as "the dismal science", economics continues to attract new scholars in great numbers every year, and a number of websites provide high-quality materials for those interested in the subject. The Economic History Services website began life in 1994 as a mere discussion list, and since then has grown to include numerous resources that include book reviews, a collection of course syllabi, a directory of economic historians, along with the ever-popular "How Much is That?" service. The "How Much is That?" area is quite useful, as visitors can use it to determine historical prices for goods and services, interest rates, wage rates, and inflation rates. Budding economic historians will want to check out the "Ask The Professor" feature, which allows users to submit queries related to the subject. The section also contains an archive of answered questions, which include such enigmas as "Is deflation bad for the economy?" The site also includes a calendar of events for persons interested in learning about upcoming lectures, conferences, workshops, and the like.
3/5/06
Pew Institute for Ocean Science
http://www.pewoceanscience.orgEstablished in 2003, the Pew Institute for Ocean Science is dedicated to conducting, sponsoring, disseminating, and promoting world-class scientific activity aimed at protecting the worlds oceans and the species that inhabit them. As part of their ambitious mission, the Institute has established this website to provide open access to information about their research and findings. This information includes material on various projects, such as the Pew Global Shark Assessment as well as their work on fishery yields around the worlds oceans. The projects area is well organized, as visitors can see what types of media are available for each project, such as images, videos, audio programs, press coverage, and publications. The events calendar here is a nice feature, and is worth consulting to find out about conferences that address deep sea corals and local approaches to marine conservation and management.
Two on Teaching in Community Colleges The Center for Teaching Excellence [pdf]
http://www.lansing.cc.mi.us/cte/Del Mar College-Teaching and Learning Center [Real Player] http://www.delmar.edu/tlc/home.html A number of colleges and universities have excellent sites dedicated to helping professors and other educators learn more about effective teaching methods. In recent years, more than a few community colleges have also adopted such techniques, creating a plethora of websites geared towards assisting educators. The first site profiled is from the Lansing Community Colleges Center For Teaching Excellence. From their page, visitors can take a look through a number of useful documents, such as Classroom Strategies for Fostering Student Retention and Essays on Teaching Excellence. The site also contains their biannual newsletter, Spotlight on Faculty, which features a number of teaching tips and techniques developed by faculty at the college. The second site will take users to the Teaching and Learning Center at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Here visitors can find helpful technology tips designed for incorporating technology into the classroom, and a number of podcasts of interest. These podcasts deal with a number of themes, ranging from mental health crises on campus to resource challenges facing community colleges.
Hirshhorn: Hiroshi Sugimoto
http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/sugimoto/This Web exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Hirshhorn Museum features series of photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto, from 1976 to the present, the entire span of his career. The majority of the photographs are black and white, with the exception of the series Colors of Shadow, which reveals, in the artist's words, "sublime variety in shadow hues." Another series in the exhibition is Architecture, which are photographs showing Sugimoto's "erosion-testing" of exceptional examples of modern architecture, such as the Chrysler or Seagram Buildings. This is accomplished by photographing the buildings using a large-format camera, so that the images are blurred; only the best examples of architecture hold up. Also fascinating is the Portraits series, recreating 16th century portraits of Henry the 8th and his wives in black and white photography. Although the digital images of Sugimoto's photographs are not presented in a particularly high-tech way, they are still worth a look. Visitors can also listen to Hiroshi Sugimoto podcasts, including an exhibition tour and meet the artist events.
San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection
http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/librarylocations/sfhistory/sfphoto.htmIn the 1936 film, San Francisco Jeannette MacDonald sings the films title song, which of course includes the Gus Kahn-penned lyric San Francisco, welcome me home again/Im not at home to go roaming no more. For those who might be pining for Baghdad by the Bay (or for images from the infamous earthquake in 1906), this online collection from the San Francisco Public Library will be most welcome. All told, the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection contains more than 250,000 photographs of San Francisco and California, although not all of these photographs are available online here. Visitors should begin their voyage through these images by using their search engine, which allows them to search by photographer, subject index, or by date. Perhaps the most novel way to search the images is to look through the photos by using an interactive map of the entire city. Here visitors can find photographs of the historic Moulin Rouge nightclub in the historic Barbary Coast area, or move on over to Sutro Heights over on the Pacific Ocean. For those who might be feeling a bit less adventurous, there are a number of thematic collections, including Picture This: Family Photographs of Everyday San Francisco.
1/10/06
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal
http://scholar.library.miami.edu/anthurium/home.htm
While some may think the extent of Caribbean literature is limited to the works of Derek Walcott, the website for this journal housed at the
University of Miami may help visitors to expand their horizons. Anthurium is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original works by Caribbean writers and scholars, and appears only in a digital online edition. Started in the fall of 2003, the journal has published pieces on Caribbean slave narratives and new poems on the experiences of indigenous peoples throughout the region. Visitors can also use a number of indices to find works of interest, including those that are organized by author or title. Finally, visitors may also appreciate the fact that there are external links to other digital initiatives, along with a link to the Caribbean Literary Studies program at the University of Miami.
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/
For close to seventy years, the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in
Maryland has had a diverse set of ongoing research projects dealing with wildlife and natural resources in and around the region. Their homepage offers a great deal of material on these projects, along with some very fine information for the general public. The “Spotlight” section is a good place to start as it contains a frog call quiz and video clips of Atlantic sea ducks in their natural habitat. The “Science Features” area contains an area where visitors can ask resident biologists pressing questions and a “Did You
Know?” section that provides answers to such questions as “Why are whooping cranes endangered?” The site is rounded out by an area that provides a tribute to Chandler S. Robbins, an employee of the center for over sixty years. Robbins is perhaps best known as the author of The Field Guide to Birds of North America and for his work on identifying the deleterious effects of DDT on bird populations.
The Henry Ford Museum
http://www.hfmgv.org/
Whatever one’s feelings may be about Henry Ford, his legacy to the American public is tremendous, and his love of American history is well-documented. Part of this legacy may be found at the Henry Ford Museum complex, which contains a number of operational units, such as Greenfield Village and the Benson Ford Research Center. For those who might be unable to make the pilgrimage to Michigan, the Museum’s omnibus website will help bring some of the fine edifying material into their homes. For starters, there is the “Explore & Learn” area of the site, which contains a number of online exhibits such as a tour of the bus that carried Rosa Parks on her fateful trip in Montgomery and the “Innovators” exhibit, which profiles such Americans as Thomas Edison and R. Buckminster Fuller.
Millennium Seed Bank Project
http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/msbp/
A number of organizations have developed a concerted interest in
establishing seed banks to protect the wide diversity of existing plant life for future generations. The Royal Botanic Gardens is currently working on their own project, whose ultimate goal is to collect 24,000 plant species. So far, they have successfully secured samples from almost all of the native flowering plants in the United Kingdom, and their work continues on in the present day. Many visitors to the site will want to peruse their homepage and the helpful graphic (a peapod) helps orient first-time visitors to the various sections on the site, such as “Solving Seed Problems” and their publications and data area. The site also includes a field manual for those who would like to collect their own seeds in the field as well as data about the seeds collected thus far in the Seed Information Database.
Partnership for a Nation of Learners
http://www.partnershipforlearners.org/
It is hard to imagine a way to seamlessly integrate museums, libraries, and public broadcasters into the needs of their communities, but the Partnership for a Nation of Learners initiative seeks to do just that. The initiative was started by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services and is designed to assist such institutions in the quest “to be leaders in their local communities”. To do this, the Partnership is offering workshops, web-based materials and grants. This website was created to provide information on these programs. While a great deal of material has yet to be added to the site, they plan on offering case studies of successful partnerships, along with archived videoconferences.
World Summit on the Information Society
http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html
Convened first by the United Nations in 2003 in Geneva, the World Summit on the Information Society is concerned with providing a place for dialogue on a number of crucial issues, such as the ongoing “digital revolution” that is transforming the developed and developing world as well as the “digital divide”. The most recent international World Summit took place in November 2005, and this website provides detailed information on its proceedings, meetings, and focus groups. From the homepage, visitors can view a list of final documents submitted at the meeting, read a list of speakers, and view some of the webcasts from the proceedings. To get a sense of the broad scope
of the general nature of the goals of this summit, visitors may wish to read the text of the opening address given by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the meeting. Finally, visitors may also wish to view the four documents adopted at this meeting, including the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.
Paris: Capital of the 19th Century
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/paris/index.html
The world of Paris in the 19th century was one that might be called a gaudy yet rich mixture of cultural, social, and other such delights. From the poems of Baudelaire to the architectural fancies of the Second Empire, the City of Lights became an icon of all that was (and is) urban, for good and for ill. Much of this world can be explored through a variety of visual documents offered by this ongoing project that is being developed as part of the digital projects initiative at Brown University. Visitors to the site can browse the materials here by subject, title, or by historical period. The site also contains a number of historical essays that provide additional background to this subject. The essays deal with the emerging condition of modernity, panoramic literature, and alienation in the city. The site is rounded out by a nice listing of additional online resources dealing with
19th century France.
Song of America
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/songofamerica/songofamerica.html
The Library of Congress has bringing a number of America’s musical archives to its website through the “I Hear America Singing” project, and this addition to their existing work is most welcome. The Song of America website is designed to serve as a companion piece to an ongoing 11-city concert tour which features the baritone Thomas Hampson performing a number of American songs. This site draws visitors’ attention to the world of the American art song, which began to flourish in the late 19th century as a number of American composers began to explore the world of the more serious “art song”. Influenced by the German lied and the French melody, composers such as Charles T. Griffes and Edward MacDowell began to incorporate a more refined sensibility into their works. On this website, visitors can learn more about eight of these American art songs by examining short essays about each piece, listen to an audio recording, and in many cases, viewing manuscripts of each composition. Some of the songs profiled here include Walter Damrosch’s, Danny Deever’s, and Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer”.
Cover Art: The Time Collection at the National Portrait Gallery
http://www.npg.si.edu/time/
The US National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution holds an impressive collection of portraits from the covers of Time magazine.
In 1978, the magazine donated about 800 portraits to the Gallery, and the collection has since grown to over 2,000. The web version of the collection features a selection of portraits, accompanied by biographical sketches and audio where appropriate - for example, listen to a clip of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech" while viewing his February 18, 1957 cover. A few broad categories have been created for browsing, such as Sports, Civil Rights, and Technology & Invention. Richard M. Nixon turns out to be the most featured person on Time covers, with 57 appearances. The Resources section provides the link to search Time Magazine's comprehensive archive of covers http://www.time.com/time/coversearch.
National Tribal Justice Resource Center
http://www.tribalresourcecenter.org/
Over the past decades, Native Americans have fought to provide legal assistance to their number and also to provide adequate support to their tribal justice systems. In 2000, the National American Indian Court Judges Association with funds provided by the US Department of Justice established the National Tribal Justice Resource Center. Since that time, the Center has provided a wide range of technical services to the American Indian and Alaska Native justice system. Visitors with an interest in how the Native American justice system functions will appreciate the information available here, much of which is contained with sections that deal with tribal courts, legal research, and their outreach programs. Interested parties may wish to start by looking through the Tribal Court Opinion Search Page, which contains over 1800 Tribal Court opinions, memorandums, and orders. Persons who might be unacquainted with the history of these courts may also want to read a brief history of these institutions that is offered here. Visitors will also appreciate the fact that the homepage also offers links to relevant funding opportunities and an “In the News” digest that culls together topical news stories that deal with various tribal suits and related matters.
history@state.gov
Whether you are looking for advice on historical sources, key facts and figures from the database, or simply the answer to a nagging question, history@state.gov may be the resource you need. Tap into the impressive expertise of the world’s largest group of historians of U.S. foreign policy. The Office of the Historian answers thousands of questions from the world each year – even from our own diplomats.