Utah Becomes Third U.S. State to Implement Statewide GIS for Education with a suite of ESRI products

Utah officials said the state purchased a comprehensive, state wide K-12 software license that will allow the state to use GIS software with every instructional computer in all of Utah’s K-12 schools.

y Shane Peterson, News Editor Govtech.net

"This is much bigger than just technology education," said Melvin Robinson, technology education specialist of the Utah State Office of Education. "GIS as a research tool is something that should be used by all curricular areas across the whole gamut of education."

Utah licensed a suite of ESRI products, including ArcView (for Windows and Macintosh), ArcView Image Analysis extension for Windows and the ArcAtlas data set, which provides information on political boundaries, population density, natural landscapes, transportation networks, elevation zones, bio-climatic soils, earthquakes and faults, vegetation and precipitation.

Utah is now the third state to implement GIS for use in all of its schools. Montana announced its statewide instructional license in November 2000, followed by South Dakota in July 2002.

"We looked at what Montana was doing and decided to pursue a statewide license because that would allow us to implement the software without a lot of costs to the individual schools or to the districts," said Robinson.

The Technology Education Department of USOE is now offering software training to teams of teachers at five locations across Utah. At these training sessions, teachers will also receive a CD of data for their individual county compiled by Utah’s Automated Geographic Reference Center (AGRC).

"The schools can use information relevant to the kids — they can see their own streets, their own community, their own census data and use the information across different curriculums," said Robinson.

To develop the curriculum, USOE is collaborating with the AGRC, Utah State University and the Utah Geographic Alliance as well as district specialists and professionals from across the state. This partnership has been the driving force for this new GIS program.

"Right now, we have some very excited teachers," Robinson said. "I can see down the road where kids will be coming out of the high schools with the same literacy on GIS as they have on a word processor. When that takes off, it’ll open a whole world of opportunity for them."

Utah State Office of Education

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