Mapping out learning

Students in Utah are looking at themselves from a whole new perspective — from space.

That new vantage point has students like sixth-grader Jake Strobel, 12, getting to school early and skipping recess to glean a few more moments with a laptop computer and a satellite image.

"It's just so fun getting on a computer. It's better than recess," Strobel said as he opens a satellite photo of West Valley's Hillsdale Elementary School.

Bob Manley, a sixth-grade teacher at Hillsdale, said Strobel isn't the only Utah student trading in his free time for computer time. Students and teachers throughout Utah are getting hooked on the latest satellite technology using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to pinpoint locations from space.

That technology is now hitting Utah school districts through a statewide grant, allowing students to become mapmakers from start to finish using geographic coordinates and state data.

In Manley's class, one student creates a map revealing that a fault line runs directly underneath his classroom. Across town at Salt Lake City's Escalante Elementary School, fifth-grader Luis Lee creates a safe walking map showing how to get from his house to school.

"You can go to places that you've never been to and tell your mom how to get there," Lee said. "We can look all around the state and see where we are."

The GIS technology is gaining steam in Utah's education system with teachers and students using state coordinate data to create authentic maps, said Pat Lambrose, teacher facilitator for Salt Lake School District. The growing interest, she said, is largely because the mapping software can be used in virtually every subject.

"It's not just about the technology, it's the higher level of thinking that GIS requires," she said. "It's definitely geography, but it's also language arts, math, problem solving. It's everything. "

Incorporating the high-tech software into those everyday lessons has become Manley's main concern since he started teaching his sixth-graders how to make maps of everything from Egyptian pyramids to the sound waves emanating from a Mount St. Helens eruption.

During math lessons, Manley's students use map scales to determine the distance between two locations and then convert that mileage into feet, meters and inches.

In social studies, his students look at a map of the Pony Express and then layer on a contour map of the United States to show how mountain ranges determined the mail's route.