Thursday, January 26, 2017

OwnYourMap Wk2 lab

     

Another week, another lab, another journey. This week we were introduced to GIS and the basics of it. We learned that GIS can be used in many applications, such applications can assist in law enforcement, developers, and delivery truck drivers. We also learned some of the misconceptions of GIS. The chapter spoke on the different data types of GIS data that make up a GIS map some examples are spatial data, aspatial data, discrete geographic features and all other related data structures . The chapter basically explained how a GIS map is generated and what types of data are used to make GIS maps, and how GIS is used in the real world.

      In the map above it shows a rendering of Encambia County Florida with an inset map of the state of Florida in the top right corner which indicates where Encambia County is located in the state of Florida. When I created this map, I tried to make it look as if it were something you would find in a college brochure, but it possessed the attributes of a common map. I kept the colors pleasing to the eye and made sure the UWF main campus was the focal point of the map.

       





Wednesday, January 18, 2017

OverviewArcGIS


 In  this weeks lab we got our first hands on experience using the eDesktop, extracting, and saving files on the different drives provided on the virtual machine. From my expercience with the lab, I found navigating through the virtual machine, locating, and unzipping the OverviewArcGIS.zip file proved to be a most unpleasant task, but once the hurdle of finding the files, and extracting the files were completed, the rest of the lab went smoothly.
   The focus of the lab to me as it seemed, was to have the student become familiar with the basic structure of the map, and learn the functions of the different buttons on the menu ,task bar and TOC.
  In the map above it shows the many different countries of the world and their populations. The population data gathered I believe was from 2008. The green colors of the map indicates the populous of each country, the darker the green color the more people inhabited that area. The legend in the left side bottom corner is a correspondence between the colors and the amount of people. In the map we were required to put some text indicating what was being displayed, who created the map, when the data was retrieved, a scale, a compass, and a legend.
  Overall the lab was a good practice session, I got to learn how to navigate through eDesktop, use the virtual machine, learn the the basics of  ArcMap, and create a data map all in one lab.