The National Geographic Society has been inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888. It is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation.

National Geographic engaged Blenderbox to completely overhaul Xpeditions, their primary geography lesson-plan resource, and to bring numerous other education resources all under one consistent website.

The old Xpeditions website had become outdated and was focused on a limited set of geography lessons for educators. In contrast, the new site has been architected to accommodate both formally trained and informal educators, parents, students and kids with a growing range of dynamic activities, projects, and lesson-plans that can include multimedia, slideshows, audio, interactive maps, printables and videos.

The new lessons adjust contextually and can be displayed in three english language levels including english for an ESL audience. Multimedia assets can go fullscreen for use in classrooms on smart boards, and an intelligent collection and thematic search system links a wide range of content together under a simple faceted search interface.

Development entailed extending and customizing their internal CMS system driven by a Django back-end.

The end result is a visually engaging and rich resource for geography educators that has been hailed as a model resource at education conferences around the country.