William Channing Woodbridge (December 8, 1794 – November 9, 1845) was an American geographer, educational reformer, and the author of many geography textbooks.

Woodbridge's father, William Woodbridge, was a Yale University graduate, minister, and a major advocate for educational change in Connecticut. The senior Woodbridge wrote textbooks on grammar and spelling, and was the first preceptor of Phillips Exeter Academy. He worked with his son on some of the younger Woodbridge's projects. His mother was Ann Channing, the aunt of Bostonian Unitarian theologian William Ellery Channing.

William Channing Woodbridge was born in Medford, Massachusetts. His family soon moved to Connecticut, where his parents taught him Latin, Greek, Chemistry and Mathematics. Throughout his life, he suffered from what was then called scrofula, which today would probably be diagnosed as tuberculosis.

In June 1808, Woodbridge entered Yale as the youngest member of his freshman class. Here, he was inspired by Yale College's president, Timothy Dwight IV. Woodbridge developed an interest in both the American landscape and in the publication of geographies, and was a member of the Society of Brothers in Unity. Many of the values later reflected in his publications were those of Yale at this time. Woodbridge was a true son of the Enlightenment, believing in the importance of reason and observation. However, like Dwight he remained a committed evangelical Christian. Woodbridge rejected the Unitarian ideas which were then influencing so many of his friends and relatives. He believed passionately in science, but he was certain that this knowledge of the material world could only lead people closer to God and to a firmer morality. He believed in the essential unity of all humans. After discussing the location of the various races of mankind, his 1830 edition of Rudiments of Geography reminds readers, "The scriptures inform us that all of these races are brethren of the same family; the children of the same first parents."

Upon graduation, Woodbridge briefly attended Princeton University with the hope of studying theology and becoming a missionary. When ill health made this impossible, he turned to teaching. Eventually, he accepted a position as an instructor with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford, Connecticut. Here, he pioneered in teaching geography to the disabled. Woodbridge also began work on a small geography text which would eventually be published as Rudiments of Geography.

In October 1820, Woodbridge left his teaching job and traveled to Europe. He was desperate to improve his health and keen to meet prominent European educators and visit their schools. He also wanted to gather material for an expanded geography. He traveled via Gibraltar and Algeciras to Palermo, Livorno, and Rome. He returned to Hartford in July 1821, where he began writing a new and greatly expanded geography that would incorporate what he had learned in Europe. It was eventually published 1824 as A System of Universal Geography. The book would remain in print, with small variations in title, until 1866.

For Woodbridge, understanding European thinkers was critical to improving American education. In the fall of 1824, he left the United States for a second and more extended trip across the Atlantic. The small amount of money he earned from books was insufficient to support even his very humble lifestyle. Therefore, he supplemented his earnings by teaching the disabled. For all of his admiration of European educators and geographers, he decided they were behind the United States in two areas: female education and teaching the disabled. Woodbridge spent the summer of 1826 teaching in Hofwil, Switzerland, where Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg had established an influential experimental school. Woodbridge was in Paris in January 1827, correcting proofs of his new geography textbook. He had made the acquaintance of the great German explorer, scholar, and student of physical geography Alexander von Humboldt. Woodbridge continued to correspond with von Humboldt and incorporated many of von Humboldt's ideas in his geographies. In the introduction to his new geography text he thanked von Humboldt and the Geographical Society of Paris for their assistance. Woodbridge then went back to Hofwyl, probably sometime in 1828, before returning to New England in 1829.

While on his second trip to Europe, Woodbridge observed the teaching of vocal music by Nägeli, Pfeiffer, Kübler and others, and brought home many of their works with him. Upon his return to Hartford, he began working with Elam Ives, Jr. to see those Pestalozzian-based teaching methods applied. Their experiment was apparently successful. During this same time, Woodbridge had gone to Boston and met Lowell Mason, whom he persuaded to go and observe Ives' experiments in Hartford.