Johns Creek Engages Local Teachers for GIS Day

As part of its annual GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Day celebration, the City of Johns Creek’s GIS team reached out to local high school teachers to make them aware of the role GIS plays in our daily lives. 

The team delivered 19 “care packages” (GIS-related items) to geography and computer science teachers in Johns Creek’s three high schools (Chattahoochee, Johns Creek and Northview). 

The effort is the beginning of a deeper relationship that the city hopes to foster. “We want to make it easy for our teachers to use GIS in the classroom by leveraging our expertise,” Nick O’Day, GIS manager for the city, said. “The hope is that we can expose students to this technology early and get them interested in careers in a heavily science-based industry.”

The U.S. Department of Labor identifies Geospatial Technology (the industry in which GIS professionals are grouped) as a high-growth industry. Further, the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration has found that the market for geospatial technology has grown steadily at an annual rate of almost 35 percent year over year.

If all goes according to plan, the city’s nationally recognized GIS team will be involved in supporting these teachers all year instead of just one day each year. 

GIS Day is a world-wide event sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the United States Geological Survey, The Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and esri. Since 1987 these groups have been champions of GIS Day in an effort to increase public awareness of the usefulness and pervasiveness of GIS throughout many facets of modern culture.

– City of Johns Creek