Eddie's GIS Blog

No picture this week, only a link to my map: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=5708de30779a4a3694760c2933bafe48 This week I played around with different ways to share maps as well as making my own data. I came up with the Top Ten Things to Do in Orlando, seeing as I have lived here for more than 20 years, I feel that I am some sort of an expert. After coming up with the list, I added the most important information to an excel spreadsheet and then uploaded that to ArcGIS online. I was pretty surprised to see there wasn't any other special program to make the data I needed for a map. To share the data, I practiced exporting to ArcGIS Online, making map packages, and creating a google earth map. The google earth map was my favorite and it seems like a solid choice to use when giving something to someone who isn't familiar with GIS. Overall, this was a great week that answered my biggest question: how do you make points on a map if no one else has ever done it.

This was a pretty big week: I made three maps! It was actually really easy to make three different maps once the base layer was made. I saw the ArcCatalog this week and it was much easier to look through the metadata for the files in ArcCatalog as opposed to right-clicking each of the files in the table of contents and finding the data there. I had some trouble with labels, they were sometimes hard to read or they made the map feel cluttered, at least to me. There was a part in this lab where there were limited directions and I was on my own. After double left clicking and right clicking some things, I was able to set up the map; time will tell if I set it up correctly, but it was set up. I liked being able to stretch my wings a little and figure out how to set up the elevation on my own. It was really satisfying to find all of the settings on my own. Here are the maps that I worked so hard to make.

This week was a real whirlwind! After figuring out that I was getting my data from the wrong place, I was able to make this week's map. I thought it was really cool making the insert map! This product almost looks professional! There were lots of little details when it came to changing symbols and labels: some things you have to double click and some things you have to right click. After navigating through all of that, I was able to get all of the essential map elements. All-in-all, the big parts: making the insert map, adding the data, and arranging the elements was easy; formatting all of the small details was the most tricky part, but after reading the manual and clicking around everything seems to have come together. Excluding the hurricane, this was a great week, and I am looking forward to week three!

Week 1: ArcGIS Overview Lab This project was a real treat for someone who enjoys poking around new programs and figuring them out. The directions for the lab were straight forward and made making the map super easy. If I ever got stuck there was a handy screen shot to guide me. The program seems pretty easy to pick up: the controls are right on the tool bar and you don't have to hunt, the names of the tools are pretty self explanatory, and there are multiple ways of getting help. This map seems pretty simple. The data was collected from the USGS, and it shows the world, compares the populations of all of the countries and shows where some major cities are. I am really looking forward to the next project!