Tuesday, November 30, 2004

BBC - History - Multimedia Zone
It's been awhile since we pointed out this gallery of BBC's interactive features.
Transcontinental Railroad Animation BBC - History
We've featured one or two transcontinental rail sites before; this one comes from BBC. One technique I like is that you must wait for the months to click by. Perhaps a little calendar tearing animation would add to the effect.

Monday, November 29, 2004

What killed the Dinosaurs? PBS
Flash interactive lets you compare the theories and evidence. From the Evolution series..there's a lot more media on this site.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Center for Cooperative Research
No media here yet, but an interesting examples of open-source history writing. Unfortunately, the topic "Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere" has nothing to do with Sadaam's rape and branding specialists.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Want to design video games? Dallas Observer
A reporter tells us an inside story of the students at SMU's Guildhall. There's more references to the game design school at the Slashdot item.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Who Graduates? Who Doesn't? Urban Institute
A Statistical Portrait of the Class of 2001 Summary and Full Report.

In Ohio, 2/3 of black males don't.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Google Scholar
In beta. A service for serious research. Of course, many or most of the retrieved articles will be behind pay-fer walls--its hard to run a technical society on advertising. [Your school or local library may have a subscrption. Often you can log on at home using your card number].

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Our Kids Deserve Better than a Google Future
"To highlight my point, I just did a search on Guadal Canal - the site of a rather significant battle in World War 2. [Results included:} The first failed to even load. .. My next recommended links were game cheat websites (dubious indeed especially with a .Ru extension), followed by three property or Hotel sites, three more games sites, two sites offering to sell me memorabilia but actually containing no useful information, and finally finished off with a method of cooking Guadal Canal cactus."

Friday, November 19, 2004

National Survey of Student Engagement Annual Report 2004
While the graphic design is most excellent, the content doesn't exactly titilate. The Wall Street Journal's highly critical review, doesn't even capture the blahness of the findings.
Most surprising element?: 16-20% report NO use of electronic media to do classwork. Is that a testable claim?

Thursday, November 18, 2004

The Great War . Maps & Battles . Europe in 1914 | PBS
Dynamic maps trace the major operations. There are also a number of voices and videos, and a nice overall index of this large site.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

The 84th NCSS Annual Conference
Starts Friday in Baltimore. Who's gonna be there? Exhibitors.
Inside Tunnel "Harry" PBS | NOVA
You have seen The Great Escape, haven't you?! NOVA followed a team of archeologists as they searched the site of Stalag Luft III for the original tunnel. Use this interactive to explore the camp and tunnel Harry.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Activision: Call Of Duty
Arriving in stores tomorrow: Call of Duty-Finest Hour from Spark Unlimited, for console game systesm.

Monday, November 15, 2004

The Innovators Tournament | PBS | They Made America
Oh this one is hillarious. Students do an NCAA-type tournament chart, and pick the winners of head to head competition among 32 inventors: e.g. the inventor of containerized shipping vs. the creator of the bra!

Saturday, November 13, 2004

New Media TextbooksAwhile back we listed some textbook companies' online multi-media. This page from San Antonio College list 17 or so.

Friday, November 12, 2004

American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States
Pretty sure we've mentioned this powerful audio source. Today I stumbled across one particular recording: the King Harry's St. Crispin's day battlecry, from Henry V.
The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption Fordham Institute
Haven't read this yet, but the last report they issued was so controversial, why not!

Thursday, November 11, 2004

The Price of Freedom: Americans at WarSmithsonian
Wow! The Smithsonian has taken on the wars that made the nation - not the homefront, or women int the war, or industry, but the wars themselves. Opens today for Veterans Day. Also, the Post has a review: Our Wars.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Election 2004 | NY Times
The Times audio slideshow looks at the election and the term ahead. There's a map like the one mentioned last week. Now, can we get one of these that crosses the years?

Friday, November 05, 2004

Votes by County
Boy, this wouls make a great interactive. One of the more interesting phenomina is how differently city people see things compared with everyone else. This map shows how every county in the US voted. Even Orange county, hardly a rural backwater, voter differently than ajacent Los Angelos and San Diego counties!