GIS Educational Trends

This presentation “GIS Educational Trends” was given by Mr. Basanta Shrestha on the occasion of the International GIS Day Celebration at Birendra International Conventional Centre (BICC), Kathmandu on 15 November 2006.The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region extends over 3500 km from Afghanistan to Myanmar. Altogether eight countries namely Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar fall in this region. This Hindu Kush-Himalayan region is home to more than 150 million people. The Mountain geography plays a dominant role in sustainable mountain development of these people. This presentation discusses about the role of geography in every day life of people and a medium to have a spatial perspective on natural and man made events; and GIS as a means of providing a unifying framework at the social, economic and environment level for the integration of information. The presentation also discusses on the emerging technologies like Geographical Information System (GIS), Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (RS), Global Positioning System (GPS), Dynamic Mapping and 3-D Visualisation etc. and the convergence of these technologies with the advancement in Internet technology, having high bandwidth connectivity, easy accessibility and data availability in the super highway along with the growing culture to use them. GIS in this regard is also a visual language which is important to be incorporated in the educational curriculum. The GIS human resources should therefore, be developed at the very basic level in universities, colleges and schools.