  The article is devoted to the problem of incorporation geographic information
systems (GIS) in world school practice. The authors single out the stages of
GIS application in school geographical education based on the retrospective
analysis of the scientific literature. The first stage (late 70s - early 90s of
the 20th century) is the beginning of the first educational GIS programs and
partnership agreements between schools and universities. The second stage (mid
90s of the 20th century - the beginning of the 21st century) comprises the
distribution of GIS-educational programs in European and Australian schools
with the involvement of leading developers of GIS-packages (ESRI, Intergraph,
MapInfo Corp., etc.). The third stage (2005-2012) marks the spread of the GIS
school education in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America; on the
fourth stage (from 2012 to the present) geographic information systems emerge
in school curricula in most countries. The haracteristics of the
GIS-technologies development stages are given considering the GIS didactic
possibilities for the study of school geography, as well as highlighting their
advantages and disadvantages.
