Looking for some great reading material and ideas for gift-giving this holiday? Take a look at some of the best digital material the National Geographic Society published this year!
Get Involved!
The Society would not be able to exist without the generous donations and support from readers like you, which is why our new donation pages are a BIG deal. In a Society-wide collaboration effort, we were able to create about a dozen elegant, clean, and easy-to-navigate pages—featuring some of our beautiful full-width photos.
Mars Globe
The Mars Globe is an out-of-this-world online interactive where students explore the planet and investigate geology or exobiology questions. This tool asks students to do their own research and support their reasoning with evidence.
Remarkable, Rare Photographic Moments With Amazing Ocean Animals
This monstrously popular Ocean Views post featured excellent use of imagery to convey the wonders of the ocean—tied to a strong message of wonder, appreciation, and conservation!
NationalGeographic.org
We facilitated the establishment of a digital foundation for the nonprofit work of National Geographic Society: NationalGeographic.org!
Out of Eden Walk
Our new interactive website for Paul Salopek’s Out Of Eden Walk is fantastic. We love beginning the experience with ambient video.
BioBlitz
Photograph by Gabby Salazar, National Geographic
This blog post celebrates the 131 BioBlitzes the National Park Service hosted across the country this year, with support from National Geographic. These events celebrated the NPS Centennial, gave people great opportunities to learn in the national parks, and helped park staff better understand the biodiversity within their borders. Update: as of Dec 9, 137,556 iNaturalist observations have been made in NPS properties in 2016!
Photo Ark
The Photo Ark is an ambitious project committed to documenting every species in captivity—inspiring people not just to care, but also to help protect these animals for future generations. The project has funded on-the-ground conservation projects focused on animals in most critical need of protection, and support for Photo Ark brings awareness to endangered species worldwide. In the next year, the program will fund even more conservation programs.
This Week in Geographic History
Photograph by NASA
We started writing the “This Week in Geographic History” in direct response to teachers asking for ways to plan in advance. Each week, this post gives teachers a round-up of events from our “This Day in Geographic History” series. Each event is matched with a map or visual, background information and an activity. It meets teachers’ needs and provides a consistent way to resurface and promote our amazing content.
Timelines
Using the terrific TimelineJS tool from the Knight Lab, we created three easy-to-navigate timelines: A History of Slavery in the U.S., WWII in Europe, and WWII in the Pacific. These timelines provide images, video, short text, and a browsable calendar component that allows readers to put historic events in context. They’re great teaching and learning tools, especially for introducing these powerful subjects.
Explorer Classroom
We’re excited about the launch and quick expansion of the Explorer Classroom hangout series, which connects explorers with classrooms around the world. We’re thrilled to be supporting our teacher host Joe Grabowski on this project, and it’s such a blast seeing curious kids ask Nat Geo explorers thoughtful questions.