This is an image of Yosemite Creek in Yosemite National Park, USA.
You may associate National Geographic Magazine with long waits at the dentist's office or elementary school required reading, but everyone's second favorite dentist read (second only to "Highlights Magazine" of course), has undergone a high-tech turn for the better. The National Geographic Society still prints the original magazine that many of us are familiar with today, but since our days as elementary school students the Society has expanded its offerings to include a television channel (Nat Geo TV), website, and several other magazines focused on travel, children, and young children. On NationalGeographic.com, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of tabs and links with everything from maps to trip ideas to current events. With webpages, photographs and video links on photography, animals, the environment, space, science, travel, adventures, and Current Events, and with astounding images that capture life in some of the Earth's most exotic locales, there are countless topics to explore and places to learn about.
In honor of "Park Week," which was this past week, and our class's focus on the National Park System, I've highlighted a subset of the National Geographic website that focuses exclusively on National Parks! This page has park guides, amazing photographs, a history of the national park system, and even an interactive tool that allows you to test your knowledge of specific parks by taking one of National Geographic's national parks quizzes! Take this one on Glacier National Park (I'm a bit biased). What have you learned about this or any national park that was presented in class that you didn't know before?
This is a really, really cool website. There is obviously so much more history to a national park than just the environmental issues, but since we didn’t get to do that research, this provides a great way of learning more about the national parks. For example, even though we studied the Glacier National Park, I didn’t know very much about the Native American Indian groups that live in that area and their history with the national park. This is so interesting!!!
This is a great resource! While the website provides some awesome information about the ecological state of many national parks, it is definitely a good resource for people wanting to visit the parks as well! By familiarizing themselves with the information on this website before visiting, visitors can be sure to modify their behavior in order to least impact the park environmentally.