Sixth graders at the Hillsdale Elementary School in West Valley City, Utah, recently saw a graphic example of how geography can affect their lives when they mapped a geological fault line and found that it ran right under their school. Using GIS in the classroom, they are not only mapping geology but also practicing their Spanish, learning about South America, and calculating how far sound travels when a volcano blows its top. Their teacher knows they are meanwhile expanding their language arts, science, and problem-solving abilities and learning a technical skill that gives them a sense of accomplishment and a life skill for the future.

Sixth-grade teacher Bob Manley is using GIS in his Hillsdale classroom to get kids interested in everything from social studies to science. Having previously worked in city government, Manley was looking for a way to use GIS technology in the classroom when he teamed up with David Davis, a volunteer in the school district's Adopt-A-School program, who also wanted to teach GIS to kids. Davis works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) Service Center in nearby Salt Lake City. The office provides more than 10,000,000 aerial photograph images and services to the Farm Service Agency, other agencies, and the private sector.

At first, Manley and Davis introduced the kids to GIS concepts without using GIS software. They used Esri's U.S. Community Atlas, a teaching aid that orients teachers and students to GIS-related subjects by helping them define the nature of their local community. Students post descriptions and maps about their surroundings on the Web and share them with other students nationwide.

In 2002, Utah students gained access to GIS software when their state signed up for a statewide license for Esri software. The license allows the state to use GIS software with every instructional computer in all of Utah's K-12 schools. Specifically, Utah licensed ArcView (versions 3.x and now 9.0) for Windows, the ArcView Image Analysis extension for Windows (from ERDAS/Leica Geosystems), and the ArcAtlas dataset. The data layers in ArcAtlas provide information on political boundaries, population density, natural landscapes, transportation networks, elevation zones, bioclimatic soils, earthquakes and faults, vegetation, and precipitation.

Manley's sixth graders began working with ArcView 3.3, and some kids started arriving early and spending other free time to work on their GIS projects. They were lucky to have a volunteer like Davis, who knew how to access 40 years of APFO historical aerial imagery for use in their projects.

"Since APFO has millions of aerial photographs spanning many decades," says Davis, "I felt that creating photographs and orthoimagery of the school area could be a good tool for the students to learn more about their community." Their part of the city had experienced tremendous growth, making it possible for the students to observe and map the many changes. Using ArcView on laptop computers, they created land change maps by digitizing the agricultural areas on the older imagery and the residential and commercial areas on the newer images and overlaying the data on images taken in different years.

Students recently have been able to perform more detailed analyses using newer, natural color imagery that has one-foot resolution. APFO Director Ronald B. Nicholls approved statewide school use of the new seamless, tone-matched compressed county mosaics of the state through the Utah Coalition for GIS Education. The coalition had previously worked with Esri to support the state license purchase of GIS software. Now the images accompany Esri GIS software when it goes out to Utah teachers.

The sixth graders have used GIS to reach far beyond their community. While doing fieldwork as a graduate student, Davis visited the city of Sarandi del Yi, Uruguay, and created a dataset of the city. While on a return visit to Uruguay in 2004, Davis showed the GIS to local and district teachers and school administrators, who expressed interest in adding GIS to their curriculum. With Esri's assistance and the efforts of individuals in several countries, two Sarandi del Yi elementary schools received ArcView 3.3 and a nearby technical school installed ArcView 9. As a result, the elementary schools in Uruguay and Hillsdale Elementary School, located more than 5,000 miles apart, are now beginning to exchange photographs and general information and plan to expand to maps, reports, and other GIS communications in both English and Spanish.

"Esri has been a good friend to K-12 education, in Utah generally and particularly to Hillsdale Elementary," says Davis. He explained that Esri President Jack Dangermond visited Salt Lake City recently for a landscape architecture conference and took time out to meet with Manley and his students. He also invited the students to give a presentation at the 2005 Esri Education User Conference and presented Manley with a medallion for his work with the students.

In 2003, Manley was also one of seven teachers nationwide to receive a scholarship to attend the Esri Education User Conference. He has also co-organized training for other elementary school teachers during a summer seminar in Alta, Utah, sponsored by the organization Friends of Alta. The teachers collected GPS data and used ArcView to create a detailed campground map as well as a map of a memorial grove showing the size, type, and location of trees.

Computer skills and community awareness are not the only extra benefits the Hillsdale students experienced. They were also invited to present their work at the Utah Geographic Information Council conference, a GIS conference at Weber State University, the University of Utah Department of Education, a Utah Education Association Conference, and two GIS Day celebrations. They placed third in the 2004 Granite School District Technology Fair and were invited to tour West Valley City and APFO offices. In addition, over the past few years, the class has received 10 laptop computers and a projector from various programs in the school district because of their work with GIS.

"Best of all, the students are learning skills that will help them now and into the future," says Davis.

For more information, contact David Davis, USDA Aerial Photography Field Office Service Center (e-mail: David.davis@apfo.usda.gov), or visit www.apfo.usda.gov.