Learning geography is sometimes difficult, but doing so sets a solid foundation on which to build an education rich with history, international relations, religious understanding, cultural empathy and philosophy. This seems to be National Geographic's motivation in their effort rebuilding National Geographic Education to create a wonderful resource for not only teachers and educators, but for students and parents as well. The site is still a beta version, but it's definitely worth a peak.
Inside the new National Geographic Education, users will find resources for connecting current events with geography, multimedia for teaching and learning new concepts, a map maker that encourages curious thinkers, and all sorts of useful tools where the end result is to become more geo-literate.
That's just the beginning though. There are customized page layouts for parents, teachers, informal educators, and children. Each view creates custom access to content that applies to the intended audience, and is a very useful way to distribute useful information to the people who would find it most interesting.
The Student and Kids view has coloring pages, homework help, cool photos & videos, and fun activities & projects. Parents can use the family view to see some of the same information with additional resources like an online library and suggestions for getting involved with NG and community programs.
Teachers and informal educators have their own views that are designed to make their jobs a little easier. They offer resources to share with their students including reference materials, multimedia, suggestions for informal projects and information for NG's educational Programs.
National Geographic's approach is going to succeed because they have covered the bases when it comes to teachers and students. It's a cycle where the teacher teaches one moment, and is taught the next by the student. This cycle is complete when both the teacher and the student have the resources available to them to help alleviate the difficulties of teaching - as well as being taught.
Check the new site today and bookmark it for future reference, you will more than likely be glad that you did.
