[PW] Re: Geography help

[Lois Fundis]

You can access the web sites for each state at
http://www.state.XX.us or http://www.XX.gov, where XX
is the two letter abbreviation of the state. From
there the kids can probably find the tourism site for
each state, since those names are less standardized.
For example, the states nearest to me have the travel
sites

http://www.callwva.gov
http://www.visitpa.gov
and http://www.discoverohio.com/

(One advantage of living in a panhandle that's less
than 5 miles across is that I tend to think in terms
of all three states!)

You can probably also find such sites for other
countries, or states/provinces/etc., within each
country, and for many cities. I think they're listed
in the entries for the states and provinces in the
World Almanac and Rand McNally Road Atlas, to name two
of my favorite print sources.

Another site the students might like is the National
Park Service at http://www.nps.gov, which has a lot of
information on many cool places. 

When I was in fifth grade, our teacher had us write to
the governor of a state (not ours!) and a National
Park and we received information on those places that
way. Not only did we learn some geography, we also got
practice writing business letters. The internet is a
little -- OK, a LOT -- faster, but the writing-away
and waiting for the responses was interesting in its
own right. I still feel a little proprietary about
Maryland, which sent a nice big packet with a map and
stuff, and I kept that brochure about Lassen Volcanic
National Park for a long time. ("There's a volcano in
California? Cool!")


--
Lois Fundis lfundis at weir.net or lfundis at verizon.net