Chapter 1: A Social History Of Gis In Education, 1985–2007

The twentieth century concludes in much the same way as it began— with the redrawing of maps. However, the new maps are not so much of geographic territory, but of landscapes depicting new and developing networks of finance, people and culture…The ultimate work of education is to learn to be a human being…But as we struggle for identities we must be able to transcend the notions of territory and engage new concepts of energy and place.

—Hartoonian, 1996: 6–8.

Since 1994, geographic educators and pioneering teachers and students have integrated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into various curricular applications (Kerski, 2000; Baker, 2002; Alibrandi, 2003; NRC, 2005). With the advent of Internet-based online GIS (or IGIS) applications, a new age of GIS integration has been facilitated (Baker, 2005; White, 2005; Mil-son & Alibrandi, in press). Multiple platforms and possibilities now exist for social studies educators to consider. This chapter provides a social history and timeline of contextual innovations and developments surrounding GIS integration relevant to classroom instruction. We discuss the overlooked stepchild of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) ten themes: Science, Technology and Society (STS) as a model for both our research and for integrating all of the NCSS ten themes using GIS technology within a framework of Diffusion of Innovations theory (Rogers, 2003) in an increasingly “flat world” (Friedman, 2005).