GIS Education in India Dr. M. Manivel PROFESSOR AND HEAD DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY, SCHOOL OF GEOSCIENCES, BHARATHIDASAN UNIVERSITY, India Email: drmm_bdu@yahoo.co.uk GIS today is one of the major decision making tools in the area of resources planning and management. Integration of high resolution satellites remote sensing technology with Geographic Information Systems has widened the potential of both these technologies. Transfer of this technology from academic and research community to hard core planners is a major and complex task. Implementing GIS in to the curriculum may encourage students to examine data from a variety of fields. The power of GIS is that it allows us to ask questions of data. Students using this inquiry approach form research questions, develop a methodology, gather and analyze data, and draw conclusions. We get GIS in to the curriculum in three major ways in courses at the elementary, secondary and university level. First, teaching about GIS dominates at the community college and university level, where courses in methods and theory of GIS are taught in geography, engineering, business, environmental studies, geology and in other disciplines. Second, teaching with GIS is emphasized at the elementary and secondary level, where GIS is used to teach concepts and skills in earth science, geography, chemistry, biological science, and history and mathematics courses. Finally, GIS is used as an essential research tool in all institutes of higher education in geography, demography, geology and other disciplines by instructing educators in the use of teaching with and about geographic information systems (GIS) and other geographic technologies (remote sensing, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) , community college, and university curricula through the use of online guidelines, online courses, and hands-on training events and provides spatial data to support the teaching with geospatial technologies in the curriculum.