General Interest
http://www.aboriginalcanada.gc.ca/acp/site.nsf/en/index.html
Learning about native peoples in Canada has never been so easy as with this compelling website created by the government of Canada, who worked in partnership with the Assembly of First Nations and other stakeholders to create this site. Visitors can search the entire site’s contents through a handy search feature on the homepage, or they can click around within such thematic areas as education, claims and treaties, justice and policing, and employment. The site also offers information organized by other themes, such as “Elders”, “Women”, “Youth”, and “Kids”. Also, there is a very impressive and frequently updated searchable calendar of aboriginal events and news updates. The site is rounded out by a nice “Virtual Tour of Aboriginal Canada”, which allows visitors to learn about daily life within these different communities. [KMG]
Campuses across the country have been developing digital media centers from over a decade now, and the Digital Media Center at Johns Hopkins University has created this website to showcase some of their own work and to serve as an example for other institutions who might be interested in improving their own facilities in this area. Visitors can click on over to the “Learning” section to take a look at some helpful “how-to guides” that cover a number of popular media applications. The real highlight of the site is the “Galleries” area, which includes work created by students at the Center. Here, visitors can view Quick Time videos of animation projects, take a listen to some podcasts, and sample some films from their “24 Hour Video Shootout”. [KMG]
Depending on one’s viewpoint, the “birth of TV” could be the best thing in human history, or merely the beginning of the cultural apocalypse. Regardless, this fascinating website takes on this momentous series of events as its starting point, and it does so through numerous clips of early television programs, insightful commentaries, and even early television guides. The BIRTH Television Archive was created from materials offered by five major European television archives, including the BBC and Osterreichischer Rundfunk. The “Library” contains links to the previously mentioned articles, which deal with the early era of television plays, the production of early television, and taboos in early television. Of course, visitors can also view several hundred clips of early television programs, read about the project’s creation, and look over a multilingual thesaurus. Given the wide variety of partners working on the archive, one will not be surprised to learn that many of the materials here are available in Dutch, German, and French. [KMG]
http://www.creativekeyboard.com/
If you started to play the guitar anytime after the late 1940s, you probably encountered the guitar instruction books of the late Mel Bay. Bay started his life in the tiny town of Bunker, Missouri and over the next eight decades he created a vast music instruction empire that included hundreds of publications. This particular website happens to lead to Mel Bay’s Creative Keyboard, which is a monthly online magazine that explores various aspects of piano music. Of course, the site is used to promote various Mel Bay products, but there’s a great deal of free content here, including articles titled “How to Compose a New Song” and “African Roots of Jazz”. The articles are all authored by accomplished musicians, and visitors can also browse through the Creative Keyboard archive, which goes back to September 1999. [KMG]
http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/h/o/home/source.html
There are many online encyclopedias floating around the web, but relatively few that cover the world of engineering. This particular online encyclopedia will be of great use to students of engineering and science, and educators working in these broad areas may wish to pass it along to their students. Visitors can click around at their leisure through the alphabet of terms and concepts explained here, or they may also wish to start off in one of the topical areas, which include mechanical engineering, computing, chemistry, and physics. With several thousand entries, visitors can learn about acoustic mirrors, aerodynamic noise, auralization, and benzene rings. Overall, it’s a nice find, and users will want to bookmark the site for future reference if they find themselves puzzled by Euler’s equation and other weighty matters. [KMG]
Security is on the minds of many in higher education, and the Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA) is very interested in playing a major role in this area of training and scholarship. With funds from the National Science Foundation, CSSIA has been working on developing an associate’s degree program in information technology security, and on providing professional development opportunities and curricular materials. Visitors to the site can learn about their many partner institutions, check in on their calendar of upcoming conferences, and also learn about job opportunities in this field. Finally, visitors can also read evaluation reports created by CSSIA’s in-house team of experts. [KMG]
http://www.lacma.org/beyondgeometry/index.html
Beyond Geometry, an online exhibition from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), showcases work created between 1945 and 1979 by 21 artists and 2 artists' collectives. The time period during which these works of art were created saw profound societal changes, as well as changes in the art world. The exhibition seeks to examine these changes as portrayed in the art. Visitors can approach the website in a variety of ways, including viewing works grouped in thematic sections, such as The Object Redefined, or The Problem of Painting; or browsing by artists' names or works. There are also brief biographies of all the artists, as well as video for some of the works - such as Gibi, 1972, a unique artist's book by Raymundo Colares - the video lets you see the pages turn. [DS]
