National Geographic Offers Comprehensive Online Educational Atlas
National Geographic's MapMachine Web site (www.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine) is a great way for educators to introduce educational, entertaining resources into the classroom. Visitors to the online atlas have access to hundreds of political, historical, street, income and weather maps. Aerial imagery and topographic maps of the United States have also recently been added to the site. All maps are user-friendly, with layers of information showing roads, political boundaries and place names that can be made visible or hidden. In addition, a suite of tools allows users to measure distances, zoom in and out, and custom label items. Once created, these custom maps can be saved, e-mailed or printed.
This article originally appeared in the 06/01/2004 issue of THE Journal.