There are many sites online with geographic data. One of the most useful is from World Climate.com. You can get average temperature and precipitation data from all over the world, and it can be copied and pasted easily into most spreadsheets. Students then can graph the data, and it makes for great math connections.

Another good site for statistics is Tides Online. Let the students investigate the rise and fall of the tides, daily and monthly. You can download the data in table form, or you can generate graphs.

This is the US Census Bureau's link to good population data from the 2000 Census, in both table and choropleth form.

If you want statistics from an Historic Census, starting in 1790, this is the place to go. You can reorganize the data to compare states (i.e. which ones had the highest number of foreign born residents in 1890?) This website is from the University of Virginia.

This is a great way to analyze population statistics with your students. It generates pyramids for current data, and it projects growth up to 2050. Make sure you try out the Dynamic model!

New York is a Great Lakes state, with more shoreline than Illinois or Ohio. If you want your students to learn about our Inland Seas, the GLIN is a good place to begin. The T.E.A.C.H. section (click on the education icon) has a great tutorial about the lakes.

Questions of the day - whether you are getting your students ready for the Geography Bee, or if you want a quick challenge, check out this site. It is usually updated daily with five new questions.

Start with NASA's Visible Earth. You can download images from just about anywhere, and they are grouped by countries and states, as well as by geographic features. The LANDSAT images are breathtaking!

If you want your students to participate in the exciting world of remote sensing, I suggest signing up for the ISS EarthKam Program. They can order images from the International Space Station, and it is a great way to get students excited about using mapping skills.

World Factbook is a general resource about world geography. The information available is endless!

This is a website from Dale Lightfoot in Oklahoma State University. It has a very extensive gallery of photographs showing cultural aspects from around the world. My favorite is Global Colar Wars ( and Other Familiar Scenes.)

If you want to learn aobout any of the states or territories, start with 50 States: States and Capitals.

If you want your students to generate custom maps of our nation, don't miss the official United States National Atlas.

Are you struggling with the concept of plate tectonics. Then I recommend this site from USGS: Dynamic Earth. It has a very good tutorial about tectonics, with photographs and links to other sites.

Nothing did more to define New York as the Empire State than our Canal System. Visit the two websites on the right to find out more about the history of the canal, and the system as it exists today. 

MapQuest is the easiest map program on the web to use. You can zoom into closer views or out to see the bigger picture.

When all else fails, visit Bill Bowerman's website, with links on just about any topic pertaining to geography that you might think of - highly recommended! It is, however, a little slow to load.