Start the 1999-2000 school year with a quick tour of some new Internet sites!

These sites are current for the week of July 26, 1999.

The Plano ISD Help Desk now has their web pages active for your use.

A Global Children's Encyclopedia, written BY Kids, and FOR Kids! A Kidopedia is an encyclopedia written by children. Schools across the world are making their own Kidopedia's, and the best articles from each are collected here, at the "Best of Kidopedia".

For a quick and easy way to find information on the Internet, you can't beat the Ask Jeeves For Kids site. Don't be fooled into thinking this is only for elementary school children. The results are almost always exactly what you ask for - unlike the other "older" search engines.

FAST Search - claiming to be the world's biggest search engine, this new Web tool is the product of a joint venture between Dell Computer and FAST, a Norwegian company that has announced its intention to catalog the entire Internet. At 80 million searchable documents, FAST Search is not actually the world's most comprehensive engine (with over 150 million documents indexed, Northern Light holds that title), but it may be if it reaches its goal of 200 million by the end of summer 1999. Whether it becomes the largest or not, it is probably the Web's fastest search engine. Test searches returned tens of thousands of hits in under a second. Most returns were fairly relevant, especially when an exact phrase search was executed. Return pages also include a link to the same search at Lycos FTPsearch, which indexes over 100 million FTP files.

The Life of Birds -- PBS [RealPlayer]

This companion to a new PBS series featuring renowned wildlife documentary host Sir David Attenborough is not as feature-rich as some comparable sites but deserves a visit nonetheless. Essentially a collection of five thoughtful illustrated essays, the site explores bird evolution, intelligence, songs (with RealPlayer examples), parenting, and several superlative birds. Additional contents include classroom resources (currently only two lessons), an essay on the making of the series, and a selection of annotated online resources.

Missouri Botanical Garden: Moss Home Page

Recognized as one of the leading centers for study and training in bryology, the Missouri Botanical Garden offers a large selection of resources for the study of mosses. These include the Index of Mosses searchable database; a searchable bibliographic database of Bryological literature; a Bryological glossary; Moss Checklists of Thailand, China, and Chile; and LATMOSS, A Catalogue of Neotropical Mosses. Additional contents of the site include an overview of the Garden's bryology program and links to other projects, including the Bryophyte Names Authority Lists, the PEET project on Bryological Systematics, and the Moss Flora of Central America.

Savage Seas -- PBS [Realplayer, Quicktime, Flash]

This companion site to the new PBS series offers a collection of informative pieces and activities centered around the world's oceans. The site is divided into four principal sections, each of which features an article, brief sidebars, video clips, and in some cases, animations. The first, The Captain's Bridge, explores shipwrecks, stormy seas, and ocean rescues. The second, The Crow's Nest, dives into the power of waves. The Deep Sea section takes users to the nether regions of the ocean, while The Weather Factory touches on cyclones, ice and icebergs, and El Nino. Additional features at the site include Ask the Expert, Facts from the Sea, an annotated collection of related sites, and information about the series.

The 1562 Map of America by Diego Gutierrez

Discovery and Exploration Maps Collection

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

General Map Collections

These recent releases from the Library of Congress (LOC) American Memory Project highlight some of the gems from the Library's Geography and Map Division. The first offering consists of about 200 maps, dating from the seventeenth century to the present day, of the areas that eventually became four of America's finest National Parks: Acadia, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, and Yellowstone. Users may search the maps by keyword or browse by geographic location (via a clickable map or an alphabetical index), subject, creator, or title. Once a map is selected, five zoom levels are available to view details. Special presentations on the history of mapmaking for each of the four parks are also provided. The other two new LOC features are additions to existing collections. The first of these, the 1562 Map of America by Diego Gutierrez, has been placed on the Discovery and Exploration Maps Collection page. Truly one of the LOC's greatest treasures, this handsomely engraved 1562 map of the Americas comes complete with images of sea monsters, exotic wildlife, and an erupting volcano. A very nice essay by a senior LOC Bibliographer on the map and its origins is also provided. The final new resource is Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World), published in 1570 and "considered the first true atlas in the modern sense." Located in the special atlases presentation section on the General Map Collections page, the online Terrarum consists of 181 image pages. Users can view the atlas page-by-page or choose to view the maps only. A brief essay is also included.

BBC Wild

Absolutely fabulous photos of the natural world can be found at BBC Wild. This commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation Natural History Unit supports a picture library containing the work of many of the world's top wildlife photographers. The BBC Wild online collection includes some 10,000 images. The site is commercial, but users can enjoy browsing the collection by simply registering at the site. One highlight of the site is its excellent search functionality: after an initial key word search, if you click on a specific photo, you can then automatically find other photos like it by selecting from a list of keywords. Another plus is the "new technique of high quality imaging called 'FlashPix.' This format allows you to zoom in on high quality portions of an image without having the entire 28MB of data pumped down your internet connection.

Human Development Report 1999-UN

Released on Monday July 12, the tenth edition of the United Nation Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report has garnered considerable attention from the international press all week. The report ranks 174 countries on quality of life indicators such as life expectancy, wealth, and literacy, ranking Canada at the top and Sierra Leone at the bottom. The report pays particular attention to the opportunities and dangers of globalization. Although living conditions in almost all countries have improved over the last ten years, according to the report, economic inequalities have reached "grotesque" proportions, "with the richest fifth of humanity enjoying more than 85% of total gross domestic product and the poorest fifth only 1%." Users can download the full text and statistical tables of the report by chapter at the UNDP site.

The Poetry Archives

Provided by eMule.com and maintained by three University of Georgia students, this free "classical" poetry archive will find ready use in literature classrooms. Currently containing over 3,600 non-copyrighted poems by 137 poets, the archive is browseable by author name or searchable by keyword. Search results also display the first line of each poem returned. Users may wonder at the omission of certain poems and poets (left out perhaps because of copyright issues), but on the whole, the site offers plenty to please teachers, students, and poetry lovers. Additional features include a random poem option and an FAQ.