Week 1 - Orientation & ArcGIS Overview

This was Week 1 of our Introduction to GIS class. We met each other through discussion posts and Blackboard Collaborate, figured out how to get around in our eLearning environments, and how to work within a remote desktop.

After creating a blog, our first lab assignment was to get familiar with ArcMap and produce a simple map. I have had a basic GIS introductory course in the past, but since it's been awhile it was good to just go through the program and reacquaint myself with the tools and basic functions. Using data provided by our instructors, we added shapefiles from our remote drives, learned about basic map building procedure, and produced a map highlighting the populations of countries by color gradient. Final steps were exporting the file correctly, archiving our data for future reference, and posting our map here.

I was happy to find that most symbol colors and text can be changed, providing a little more creative freedom. I look forward to seeing more of what ArcMap can do in future assignments.