This momentous occasion deserves a brief interlude from indulgent travel photos, stories of adventures and reflections on oddities.
The
National Geographic Education website has launched. As you can see, it's still a beta, so there will be bugs (which I no longer have to deal with!), but it's too lovely not to share. Congratulations, Patricia Norris, Education Online's fearless leader!
Now, I know most of you will have already spent hours pouring over these pages, but as I spent 3 1/2 years of my life on this endeavour, bear with me as I belabour the point.
The National Geographic Education site is built for teachers, informal educators (think daycares, scout groups, etc.), parents, and kids. All of the materials found on this site are free, and many items are downloadable to use in anything from kids' reports, to teachers' powerpoints.
A team of National Geographic staff members, and a ton of content experts, researchers, writers, editors, fact checkers, and teachers have contributed to the materials found on this site, and they (I can no longer say we!) welcome input on anything you find throughout. There are comment buttons on every page. . . which I was lucky enough to design with Alison Michel's photographic editing genius (I always did like zebras)--and now I know from experience, that this is the face a zebra makes in disgust as it takes in a nose-full of safari jeep exhaust.
There's an entire
encyclopedia and
glossary built and edited by the lovely Caryl-Sue Micalizio. Not to mention
news articles,
profiles of geographers, and the beginnings of a series of
booklists. Each entry was poured over numerous times by Caryl-Sue and her team.
The talented karaoke singer and map enthusiast, Sean O'Connor, coordinated the creation of the incredible
interactive map,
satellite image galleries,
MapMaker kits (I ADORE Alison Michel's fantastic tutorial on how to use these), and of course there's a whole series of
encyclopedic entries related to Sean's materials!
My wonderful former office-mate, Baltimorean Christina Riska, has created an amazing array of
activities for teachers and students, with all of the multimedia included for easy use in the classroom. Each activity has been vetted by experts and teachers to make sure they are appropriate and factually correct.
Alison Michel, of video and photograph fame, has been working hard to build up the
multimedia library. With
videos,
photo galleries, and
cartoons (hoorah!). She also has some fabulous
promotional videos that are linked to from the homepage. What a rockstar.
The amazing Nina Page has been working tirelessly from all angles, especially creating sites for all of National Geographic Education's Programs. . . initiatives like
Bioblitz,
Oceans Education, and the
Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Project.
Fantastic flatmate, Sarah Jane Caban, is National Geographic Education's social media butterfly, writing
blogs,
facebook posts,
newsletters and
twitter tweets galore. A fantastic writer and geographer with a sense of humor you can't beat. She also has a cool cat named Boo.
And of course, I was working on our Geography messaging, making sure all those people out there really know what
geography is, and that it is so much more than placenames and locations. On the
What is GeoLiteracy? section of the National Geographic site, you can find
geography cartoons, the quote of the day,
articles and
encyclopedic entries on geography terms, and an explanation of
Geo-Literacy from NG Education's VP, Danny Edelson.
And there you have it. Go . . . browse, search, and prosper.
