National Geographic
Services Provided:
NGELPS in Action—a professional development resource for National Geographic School Publishing—provides teachers involved with English language proficiency standards (ELPS) an educational repository for multiple types of on-demand training materials, including video, podcasts, instructional tools, and other resources.
National Geographic School Publishing provides quality PreK-12 instructional materials, including resources for emergent and early literacy, Reading/Language Arts, ESL/ELD, and Content Literacy development. NGELPS in Action is a secure, professional development resource that supports educators teaching English Language Learners.
OUR APPROACH
The site needed to be an educational repository for many different types of on-demand training materials, including video, podcasts, instructional tools, and other resources. We worked with the team at NGSP to first built out a functional spec for how the site should function and and grow over time while still supporting a variety of media types. We then worked through user experiences with wireframes, flowcharts and eventually design comps.
IMPLEMENTATION
Custom designs were integrated with a DotNetNuke Community Content Management System (CMS) for the site, which included a number of features:
- A library of video clips
- Links to on-demand training modules
- Audio podcasts (we produced the initial podcasts as well)
- Instructional tools and training resources
We edited and formatted roughly 30 podcasts for the National Geographic Reach and Science Podcast series (NGSP). We also worked with the NGSP webmaster to implement the system on their internal Windows server.
THE RETURN
National Geographic School Publishing can now organize and deliver a growing set of comprehensive professional development tools for teachers involved with English language proficiency standards (ELPS). With NGELPS in Action, teachers can improve the way they integrate ELPS into their curriculum and insure that English learners have a full opportunity to succeed in all academic content areas.




