Hawaii Leads the Geospatial Way...

Isla Young
MEDB's Women in Technology, Kihei, HI

GIS in Education: K-12 and University
Wednesday March 7, 2012 - 10:45 am to noon

Hawaii became the first state in the nation to provide Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software throughout its entire educational system, thanks to an unprecedented partnership agreement between Esri, the Women In Technology (WIT) Program, and the State's Department of Education.　 The license allows every public, private and charter K-12 school throughout the state extraordinary access to Esri's state-of-the-art GIS tools.

An online distribution center allows WIT to seamlessly manage the statewide requests for the GIS software.　 To date, over 215 requests have been processed through the Hawaii GIS K-12 distribution site:

http://www.womenintech.com/GISDistributionCenter

In addition, the GeoTech for Hawaii Schools program was created to augment the statewide GIS distribution. The initiative, GeoTech for Hawaii Schools, encompasses three parts: professional development for teachers, events for students, and ongoing support for teachers and students. We have engaged over two hundred twenty-five teachers Statewide, and potentially 32, 625 students.