Teachers looking to bolster their science, history, and culture curriculums can now turn to the National Park Service, which has created a website especially for them.
The new online service launched Thursday for educators uses spectacular natural landscapes to teach science and the authentic places where history happened to infuse an understanding of the challenges the country has faced as a nation.
“This site is a significant milestone in realizing the National Park Service’s potential as a premier provider of place-based education,” said Park Service Director Jon Jarvis. “We have been entrusted with the care of the places that define the American experience, and now, through our new Teachers website, we can share these places and the lessons they teach with those who may not be able to visit in person. Students can learn about their country through educational materials that are teacher-tested and methods that are proven to enhance student comprehension.”
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the site should help inspire students, through their teachers, to seek out national parks
"Bringing America’s national parks into classrooms will help students build a lifelong connection with nature, history and the broad and diverse culture of our Nation,” said the Interior secretary. “This new web tool is a perfect example of how technology can be used to bring us closer to our treasured landscapes and the stories and places that define the American people. I hope students and teachers across the country will use these new resources to learn about the parks and to inspire a future visit to our public lands, which belong to all Americans.”
The website is user friendly and easily searchable by location, keyword, and more than 125 subjects, ranging from archeology to biology to Constitutional law. An English class can study literature with a lesson plan from Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, a history teacher can borrow a traveling trunk from Jefferson Expansion National Memorial to make the story of westward expansion come alive, science students can chat live with a ranger from Grand Canyon National Park, and future explorers can climb Mount McKinley in Denali National Park.
The site also features materials produced by National Park Service programs, including nearly 150 lesson plans from the National Register of Historic Places’ award-winning Teaching with Historic Places program.
The website is just one part of the Park Service’s ongoing commitment to education. Every year, national parks offer more than 57,000 educational programs in parks for nearly three million students, in addition to the 563,000 interpretive programs attended by 12.6 million visitors.
At launch, the website offered more than 700 lesson plans, 140 field trips, 50 traveling trunks, 44 distance learning opportunities, 16 teachers’ institutes, 47 online galleries, and 100 teacher workshops, and will add new content as it is developed. The site also offers teachers the opportunity to rate the materials provided.
The National Park Service is also working with partners and educational institutions to expand programs and encourage the use of parks as places of learning. The agency has partnered with the Department of Education to integrate national park resources into core curriculums and, each summer, dozens of teachers participate in professional development opportunities in parks, creating education materials based on park resources through the Teacher Ranger Teacher program.
Support Essential Coverage of Essential Places
Comments
Dr. Whisnant/Dr. Sutton: Regarding your comments on broken
links on the NPS History e-Library Website. If I run a link
checker (using the free W3C Link Checker) on the Park
Histories Web page:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/park_histories/index.htm
I get no fewer than 58 broken links and another 59 that
are suspect (FAR too numerous to list); and a link check
on the History of the NPS page:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/hisnps//NPShistory.htm
shows 21 broken links (not all of which are to documents, as
many are to missing images) and 13 more that are suspect
(for example, ALL references to CRM articles simply timeout).
In fact, the History of the NPS Web page itself has missing
menu images on the left-hand side of the page. Some of
the broken links include:
Antiquities Act of 1906 by Ronald Lee
National Park Service Act of 1916: A Contradictory Mandate
Highways in Harmony
National Park System Timeline (Annotated)
A link check of the Administrative Histories Website:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/hisnps/NPSHistory/adminhistory.htm
has 9 broken links, some of which include:
Green Shrouded Miracle: The Administrative History of Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area
Museum Curatorship in the National Park Service, 1904-1982
A History of the Washington Monument, 1844-1968
The National Park Service Geology Web page:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/geology/books-geology.htm
has 25 broken/suspect links, and I could keep going for each and every
other Web page.
Below is just a sampling of the "plethora" of broken links (and
these are just from the three e-Library Highlights on the main
page):
Glimpses of Park Brochures feature:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/year-1950.htm
missing brochure cover for Thomas Jefferson Memorial
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/thje/1956.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/year-1960.htm
missing brochure cover for Organ Pipe Cactus
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/orpi/1967.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/year-1970.htm
and for Petersburg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/pete/1975.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/unigrid-g-m.htm
and Golden Gate
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/goga/1979.jpg
and Little River Canyon
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/liri/2010.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/unigrid-n-s.htm
and Shenandoah
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/shen/2003.jpg
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/unigrid-t-z.htm
and World War II Valor in the Pacific
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/valr/2009.jpg
and Air Quality (North Cascades)
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/brochures/noca/air_quali...
In the Historical Handbooks series:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/handbooks/historical.htm
the handbook for Ocmulgee is missing:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/24/index.htm
I don't recall what document I was accessing recently (I'll have
to look closer into my browser history) but the cover page was
not what I was expecting but was instead Al Runte's Yosemite:
The Embattled Wilderness, but if I clicked on the Table of
Contents, the rest of the document was the correct document
that I had followed the link to.
As important of a resource as this is for educators, NPS
staff, and the general public, I wholeheartedly concur with
edbuck's one word comment: Priorities. If NPS Management
views this Website has value, then some how, some way,
funding can be reallocated to ensure that it is kept fully
functional. While it may be a noble goal to enter this
information into the IRMA system, if a) people are not
aware to look for content in IRMA and b) an easy-to-use
Web interface is not provided to access that information
in IRMA, then the value of that conversion effort is
limited, at best. In the meantime we have a Feature Document
that has stayed the same for months on end; ditto for the
"New" Features, not to mention the lack of actual new features.
As to where to highlight this electronic library on nps.gov... if
Working with Communities was shortened to something like: Partners,
that would free up some space on the main menu bar to include
a Publications link. This should include not simply a link to
the NPS History e-Library, but to ALL electronic document
resources for the National Park Service (Cultural and
Natural Resources) and may include a search link into IRMA
and/or NPS Focus or any other repository that contains
electronic publications.
I agree, the ability for a student who might be writing a
report on glaciers, to do a keyword search on glaciers or
glaciation, and get a listing of dozens of source documents
specific to that topic, that would make this electronic
resource much more powerful; that is, provided those links
actually point to content that still exists online.
Thank you, RD, for doing this checking. When the government re-opens, I will be happy to speak with Dr. Sutton and others involved with the e-Library conversion to see if I can assist in figuring out what is causing all of the broken links. This valuable resource cannot be allowed to go dark, and with as much expertise as is floating around out there in how best to create functional, attractive digital historical libraries and repositories, I am certain that this situation can be corrected -- IF the will and funding can be found. (A big if, I realize.)