A Site That's Out of This World

There are lesson plans, educational materials, and lots of interactive features at National Geographic's education Web site (nationalgeographic.com/education ) which was created for K–12 teachers and students. "There, teachers can search by topic and grade level to find hundreds of curriculum-based lesson plans, classroom activities, and other valuable resources to meet their needs," says Bella Desai, executive producer of the site. For example, want to make a lesson on conservation and ecology livelier? Check out the virtual tour of Africa. Kids can explore the Congo River basin by moving a mouse and clicking on animals and objects for video and audio representations of life there.

The Biodiversity Atlas shows how many amphibian or butterfly species live in various areas of the U.S. Visitors can take a virtual dive into the Great Barrier Reef, exploring the reef's ecosystem. Need to spruce up that lecture on World War II? The Pearl Harbor Interactive Attack Map could provide just the spark a lesson plan needs, and there's also an underwater tour of a Japanese submarine sunk by a U.S. destroyer before the infamous raid. The site also has maps that can easily be printed onto 8½" x 11" paper. MapMachine allows users to create custom maps, complete with political, social, and environmental overlays. "[It] offers so much information on virtually every corner of the earth that librarians may find it even more resourceful and easier to use than some libraries," Desai says.