WEST VALLEY CITY — Hillsdale Elementary's high-tech mappers have gone global.

A group of sixth-grade Geographic Information Systems whizzes last week returned from an international conference of the Environmental Systems Research Institute.

There, they showcased work with GIS software, including educational maps, a West Valley City Council presentation, even efforts to spread the GIS word to other Utah teachers and students.

The 11 budding seventh-graders were among the youngest to get a spot at the global affair, said sixth-grade teacher Bob Manley, who took the students there.

"I think people need to know what these kids are doing," Manley said. "Kids love (GIS). They eat it up. You can do anything."

GIS technology uses satellite views of communities to let anyone, from businesspeople to city leaders to students, create maps of virtually anything they want. New York officials used it to coordinate emergency response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, for example. San Francisco police use it to track crimes by location.

Last fall, about 30 percent of Utah schools were regularly using GIS technology to teach math, science and other state-required subjects, estimated Cindy Clark, a database administrator for the Utah Automatic Geographic Reference Center.

Participants include Salt Lake, Davis and Nebo district schools, Manley said.

They get the software free with the help of a grant.

Hillsdale Elementary students use GIS to bring math, science, even reading lessons to life. They have mapped Egypt and Mount Vesuvius. They've created safe routes for walking to school. They've even discovered their school sits atop a geological fault.

They use GIS technology in layers. First, they pull up satellite images of a desired area. They can zero in on buildings, roads, lakes — whatever they want. They can use it to create a map to, say, demonstrate how sound carried after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, as Kenadee Hatch did last school year. Or, they can overlay a geological database to see where the Wasatch Fault runs in the Salt Lake Valley.

"It helps us expand our minds," said student Jake Strobel, who attended the San Diego conference.

Maria Maez believes the skills will help her in the workplace someday.

She's made contacts already.

About 12,000 people from around the world attended California-based ESRI's International Users Conference, which Maez and peers attended with the help of donations from local businesses and an ESRI boss, Manley said. Another 5,000 or so attended the nearby Education User Conference, also through ESRI, Manley said.

They spent hours talking to grown-ups about their work. They drummed up an audience for their slide presentation. And they said they received frequent praise.

"It feels really good," Strobel said. "We know we changed something."

Manley lauds the youngsters for their maturity.

"They were the hit of the convention," said Manley, whose lessons will go multimedia next year and students' work will be shared with partnering schools in Uruguay.

"What I value most is the opportunities these young people had to actually talk with adults," he said. "It's incredible to watch."

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