Week 11: Georeferencing Student Spotlights

Georeferencing Lab Overview: 

In previous labs, students found, obtained, and viewed several types of GIS dataset formats. Each of these datasets had been created by someone specifically for a GIS system complete with geographically referenced coordinate data built in to the file. This is why, when you add data to ArcMap, it (usually) lines up properly automatically. The Georeferencing lab teaches students a method of adding this geographic referencing to a dataset (georeferencing), and how to create some types of new geographic data.

Objectives:

• Utilize ArcGIS tools to georeference aerial photographs
• Demonstrate the Editing skills learned last week
• Discover ArcScene and produce a 3D map

Congratulations to this week's Student Spotlights!

Jennifer Tryggestad 

Jennifer currently lives in New Jersey and works for an ocean surveying company. She is a new mom and hopes that by obtaining her GIS certificate she can travel less
and manage more. We hear ya!

What we like: Very nice map design and nice building labels.
More:  see Jenny's blog

Sandie Vechio 

Sandi lives in Arizona and has a BA degree in Advertising/Journalism.  She chose the GIS program help her re-enter the work force since her children are in high school.  Her interests include GIS in real estate and demographics.  Just you wait – Sandi.  Applications and Internship are full of information.  Great job!  

What we like: Clean and well laid out map.

More:  see Sandie's blog

 

 

Bryan Hollis

 

Bryan is a New Hampshire native and spent a year working on an off shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.  He’s back on land and utilizing GIS on a daily basis at his current position.  Bryan has never had an official GIS training, but he is doing a great job so far.  Check out his 3D model!

What we like: Very nice map - we like the view, colors and labels.
More: see Bryan's blog

 

 

 

 

 

Christopher Mullins

Chris just finished nine years of active duty with the Navy and currently lives in Augusta, GA where he works as an intel analyst contracting for the government.  He has always been interested in the GIS aspect of the intel community and getting a GIS certificate would definitely help his career progression.  He’s the proud dad of a toddler and is doing a great job balancing work, the program, and his little girl.  Awesome job Chris!

What we like: One of his best, we like the color choices and how easy details read.
More: see Christopher's blog

Michael Supranowicz

Mike lives in Chesire, Massachustets with his wife and cat.  He works for the chamber of commerce and is excited about the endless possibilities of GIS and business development.  Awesome job this semester Mike!

 

What we like: Nice angle/view and map layout!
More:  see Mike's blog

Week 10 Data Editing Student Spotlights

This week, learned how to modify existing data and create new features in an existing dataset. These Editing Sessions are powerful tools in GIS, and a bulk of the day-to-day work of GIS professionals.

Exercise Objectives:

• Merge two parcels into one feature
• Select parcels based on certain criteria
• Update a road feature’s geometry to match surroundings
• Digitize a new road feature
• Create map of up-to-date features

Cograts to this week's Student Spotlights!

Roger Huron 

Roger recently completed the US Marine Corps and is currently employed by the United States Department of Justice.  He became interested in GIS after his wife (a geography major) took a GIS class.  Welcome to the spotlight, Roger! 

What we like: Really detailed map design. Data frames are a nice touch.
More: see Roger's blog.

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Kira Kefer

 

Kira lives in Idaho and works as a staff assistant for an engineering consulting firm.  She chose the GIS Certificate as a way to enhance her career.  When not at her computer, Kira enjoys outdoor activities like fishing and bow hunting.  Oh, and don’t forget about hockey – Go Sun Valley Suns!

What we like: Really nice map inset and good use of symbology tools.
More: see Kira's blog

 

Collier Kidd 

Collier is from a small town in SW Georgia and works as a forestry technician in Albany, Georgia.  He is on the road to obtaining his GISP certification and is the proud dad of an almost two year old.  Great job this semester, Collier! 

What we like: One of Collier's best maps this semester. Easy to interpret map.
More: see Collier's blog.

Gabrielle Johnson 

Gabby is a senior here at UWF majoring in Environmental Studies.  She lives in Ft. Walton Beach and when not at school or mastering GIS at home, she can be found with her daughter Bella or at the beach.  Anyone with a coastal GIS project? – Gabby is your answer.  Nice job!

What we like: This is her best map this semester!
More: see Gabby's blog.

Robert Josey

What we like: Nice placement of data and color choices. Map layout is clean.
More:  see Robert's blog.

 

 

 

 

John Kearney 

 John lives in Perry, Florida with his wife and is employed as a fire fighter/ forest ranger for the Florida Forestry Service.  He is a graduate of UCF (University of Central Florida) and became interested in GIS while managing over 800 acres of land.  Awesome job in the program and for the environment!  We appreciate all that you do! 

What we like: Really nice design and layout

More:   see John's blog.

Week 9 Vector Part II Student Spotlights

Did we skip a week? Yes, we did. Since students didn't create a visual output with Vector Part I and skills learned in Part I lead to Part II... decided to wait.

In Vector Part II, students completed the following objectives to create a final output the following students executed superbly.

Exercise Objectives:

• Create a simple buffer around road features
• Create a variable distance buffer around water features
• Run the buffer tool using ArcPython
• Run the overlay tool to combine or exclude multiple features
• Distinguish and convert between multipart and singlepart layers
• Find potential sites for a new campground

Alison Hayden 

Alison is a (recently retired) pro-triathlete of 16 years and a Marine Biologist/Oceanographer who has spent most of her career working in the field and mostly within the Gulf of Mexico."I am pursuing GIS in hopes of making my career as a Marine Biologist more practical." In her spare time, she loves traveling to exotic places, playing in the ocean and enjoys many types of exercise.

What we like:  Map layout - gray background makes information "pop."
More: See Alison's blog

Allen McLaughlin  

Allen is currently finishing up a double bachelors degree in Maritime Studies and Environmental Science.  Allen has an intense background in mapping, terrain modeling, and navigation he learned and used in the U.S. Army.  "I've used everything from dirt, sticks, string, hand grenade pins, bullets, parachute canvas, food, and even spit to create terrain models and field expedient maps in order to survive."  Allen plans on gaining a good working knowledge with ArcGIS in hopes to one day changing careers  to one involving the use of GIS.


What we like: Clean and easy to interpret map. Good color choices. Notes section including relevant art.

 More: See his Vector 2 blog post

 

Georgia Mass 

Georgia is new to GIS, but you wouldn't think it from the high-caliber of work she produces on a weekly basis!  When she isn't occupied with course work, Georgia stays busy as a Navy wife with 4 children.


What we like: What a fun map! Good choice of colors, nice layout and  road labels are a bonus. 
More: See Georgia's blog

 

Karen Matthews

Meet Karen: "When I'm not the single mom to my 13 yr. old daughter, I'm a GA attorney doing real estate.  The real estate closing business has really changed in the last 5 years. We have gone from office closings to home closings. In the last 5 years, I've completed over 2700 transactions, burned up 2 cars and 400k miles. I'm ready for a real change." Karen is increasing her skill set with GIS to better serve her clients and to increase her marketability. Being new to GIS,  Karen has done an exceptional job picking up on the science and software in these past few months.  I'm excited to see what she can accomplish in this program with the basics under her belt.
What we like: Nice map layout, colors are easy on the eye with the main focus of campsites made obvious with a strong color, inclusion of conservation sites a bonus. 
More: See Karen's blog.

 

Katherine Michael

Welcome back, Katherine! Katherine does exceptional work in this class and with GIS. If you aren't following her blog - please do.

What we like:  Clean map design, layout and color choices (something Katherine executes well with all of her maps). Shadow effect on legend, data frame and notes section.

More: See Katherine's' blog

Ross Wachendorf 

 Ross moved Texas to become a Geographic Analyst for Nokia (formally Navteq) a little over a year ago. "We use our own propriety software and methods of operation, which is why I am taking this coarse in order to learn industry standard GIS methods." For a bit of background, Ross started working with Nokia three years ago driving data collection vehicles throughout the U.S. collecting street level images - cool! 
What we like: Colors, hill shading, simple map layout and road labels are a bonus. 
More: See Ross' blog.

Week 7 Data Search Student Spotlights

In this lab, students were required to download data from three online sources and to create 1-3 maps that best represent the data on their own with little instruction. Defining a common projection, getting all data layers to "fit" and determining the best way to present the data were no doubt the biggest obstacles students faced. All of our students did great job tackling this project and the following students excelled. 

Congrats to this week's Student Spotlights!

Alex Fowlkes  

 Alex impresses us on a weekly basis with his work.  This is his second time making the spotlight and it's well deserved. Take a look at his blog to see why.
 
What we like: Excellent map design... glowing even.

M. Magdy Hussain

Magdy produces great work consistently.  You'll find his maps to be accurate, clean and easy to interpret. Yes, this means if you aren't already following his blog, you definitely should. Welcome back, Magdy!

What we like: Magdy probably split the data over three maps the best of all. Data is presented clearly.  Labels and legends are easy to view as well. As Tanya put it, superb.

Shane Smith

Shane is another one of our students who produces excellent maps on a weekly basis. If you aren't already following his blog - yup, you should. Welcome back, Shane!  

What we like: We really like the map layouts in this series. The colors and placement of elements are well chosen and balanced. This particular map has great detail.

Shannon Riley

Shannon is a Government Emergency Specialist, a Command Post Controller with the Air Force and a mom. She's used GIS to map national security incidents and weather phenomena to provide situational awareness to key military personnel. I'm excited to include Shannon in this week's student spotlight line-up.

What we like: Easy to interpret maps with everything we were looking for. I like that Shannon chose to use classic black and white for elevation in Suwanee. She added the correct units to her DEM! For some reason, not many students got this part right... but, who am I kidding? We excite easily :)

Brian Cunningham

Brian's background is in IT and communications electronics in the Air Force.  His current job in Midland, TX is with a seismic exploration company in the oil and gas industry and the survey/mapping department. Welcome to the spotlight, Brian!

What we like: Good job of presenting environmental themed data in a single map.

Week 6/Projections II Student Spotlights

Projections II gave students a guided approach to acquiring and transforming GIS data for a specific purpose. Overall, students did an excellent job with this assignment. A couple of student's work really shinned...
Congratulations to this week's spotlights!

Charlie D’Amico

Charlie is new dad to a beautiful daughter and has been using GIS in the field for years.  Charlie has been doing a great job in this course and we are happy to include him as this week’s spotlight.  Way to go Charlie!

What we like:  Layout and design including an informative legend and inset map.  Also, the data sources were spot on!  Charlie’s process summary was informative and easy to follow. 

More: Check out Charlie's Week 6 Blog Post


Georgina Black

Gina lives in California and works with Rigney staring at pictures all day.  She has been in the military on and off since 1993 and done her share of traveling to Japan (where she lived), Kuwait, Iraq, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.   She has done everything from repairing F-16 aircrafts to archeological excavations.  Gina has been doing a great job in this course and we are excited to have her as our spotlight student.  Way to go Gina!

What we like:  Excellent job using white text against the true color aerial background.  Your scale bar, north arrow, and labels really “pop”.  Size and placement of your legend and dual inset maps are a great addition to the map.

More: Check out Gina's Week 6 Blog Post

About Projections Part II Lab - 

Last week (Projections Part I), students focused on reprojecting data that already had a defined projection system, but not the one needed. For example, they reprojected a county boundary file from UTM coordinates into the State Plane system. But before a dataset can be reprojected, it must have a defined coordinate system and projection. In Projections II,  students were tasked to define the reference systems for data on their own (a common practice).

Students explored two major data warehouses for the State of Florida: Labins.org and FGDL.org. The acquisition of preexisting datasets is a critical step of GIScience projects that is, unfortunately, usually excluded from tutorial based GIS coursework. The ability to find and use what is available is one of the most important skills our GIS students can gain.

After you have located your dataset, you will nearly always find that it is:
A) in a projection or coordinate system different from the one you
are working in, and
B) not in a format that is readily usable.

Choosing which projection and coordinate system to use for a project is something to be decided early on. For most projects, datasets will be acquired from multiple sources, so some of them will almost always need to be reprojected.
 

Week 5/Projections I Student Spotlights

This week we began Part I of a two part series investigating map projections. The lab required students to create (1) map with three data frames allowing us to view three different projection types. In the end, students were able to see how using different projections can result in varied land area measurements for select counties in the state of Florida. 

This week's "Student Spotlight" awards go to:

Mariko Polk

Mariko is a UWF GIS Cert. student also majoring in Environmental Resource Management at California State University Bakersfield. Mariko has done an excellent job in class and I'm excited to include her in this week's student spotlight.

What we like: overall design and layout, colors, table and units of measure in the table makes this map very easy to view and understand.

 More: Check out Mariko's Week 5 blog post.


Lauren LeRoy
Lauren recently graduated from Florida International University with a BA in Geography. After taking a GIS course at FIU she decided to pursue a GIS certificate at UWF.  Lauren currently works as a paralegal. I'm impressed by Lauren's work and happy to include her in this week's spotlight.

What we like: title, labels, tables and overall ease of use. Lauren makes this look easy :)

 More: Check out Lauren's Week 5 post.


Anne Dodd
Anne is a hydrogeologist in West Palm Beach, Florida, working for the State. She has experience working with GIS in both private and public sectors.  Anne has done well in all assignments this semester and I'm pleased to spotlight her work this week.


What we like: We really like Anne's color-coded table.  The maps for this assignment are supplemental to the quantitative results (area measurements). The table is placed above maps showing greater importance - right on.  Finally, Anne's process summary includes essential details.

More: Check out Anne's Week 5 post.

Week 4/GIS and Cartography Student Spotlights

Any assignment focused on making maps using a GIS must begin with an important qualification: 

“GIS is not just about making maps”

Cartographic output, however, is the most common product of GIS analyses and is an essential skill. While a GIS project can just as easily end up with information displayed as numbers or tables, spatial information is usually displayed best as a map.

In this exercise, students were introduced to ArcCatalog where they practiced viewing and editing spatial data sets. After becoming familiar with the data, they created maps like the one's highlighted below.  Students learned how to create new layers from a query or selection as well as how to select only specific attributes for labeling. Once the final layers were ready, labels were converted to annotation in order to manipulate labels individually.


This week's Student Spotlight goes to:

Adriano Baptista 

When Adriano isn't working on our GIS assignments or visiting family or playing soccer or diving or... he works at the European Union Satellite Centre - an EU agency that supports the decision-making of the European Union in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
  
What we like: color scheme, layout and overall design. Lat/Long grid lines.

More: See Adriano's Week 4 blog post

Brian Deem
Brian comes to us with a background in land surveying. He spent his 20 year career in the Army doing geodetic surveying and now he has is own GIS consulting and data collection company. 

What we like: meters (unit of measure) included on the elevation legend, map layout and personalized logo.

More: See Brian's Week 4 blog post

Week 3 Student Spotlights

Week 3 assignment came from ESRI's Learning ArcGIS Desktop virtual campus course.  The course introduces the fundamental concepts of GIS and the major functionality contained in ArcGIS® Desktop software. Students completed select modules and were required to complete two maps and a process summary. 

The following students did exceptional work with the assignment:

Katherine Michael - A Maritime Studies major at the University of West Florida completing the University of West Florida GIS certificate program as a minor.  

What we liked: We like how Katherine included  details about each property. She went beyond the requirements of the assignment and the information is useful. 

More: follow Katherine's GIS blog

 

 

 Alex Fowlkes -a geography major at JSU graduating in the summer. After taking a few GIS courses at JSU, he knew he wanted to further his knowledge in the field.

What we liked:  The layout and call-out boxes for labels.

More: follow Alex's GIS Blog 

 

Week 2 "Student Spotlights"

The following students showed excellence on their "Own Your Map" lab submissions and posts.  An accomplishment well deserved!

Alexis Sutter - Alexis currently works as an Irregular Warfare Analyst.
"I am very excited into diving into GIS.  I feel like once I have GIS/Environmental Science degree/Geography Masters Degree/along with other certificates I will make myself one of the most well rounded geospatial professionals in my line of work."

See her "Own Your Map" post

What we liked: Alexis did a great job of including important details in her process summary. Her map included all required elements, relevant title and easy to interpret design.

 Mohamed Magdy Mohamed Hussain - Mohamed has been working in the surveying engineering industry since 2003.  He looks forward to improving his skills in GIS in order to change his career path.

See his "Own Your Map" post

 What we liked: Mohamed did an excellent job on the map - it included all required elements and was very easy to interpret.  He also created an ideal process summary.

Shane Smith - (not pictured) We think Shane has done a nice job of "Owning" his map (below)... take a look at his blog for more examples.

Week 2

So, it's week 2 of GIS4043 and we are off to a great start!  I hope everyone is becoming comfortable with the many facets of this course and program.

As we dive into GIS this week, students are introduced to GIS as a science, an art and a system dependent upon us (people) to ask the right questions in order to solve problems. The text provides an example of how GIS can be used to find the perfect location for a home based on predefined criteria.  Where would you like to live? What would your criteria be?  Consider how you can use GIS  - it will make the topics we cover all the more interesting and meaningful.

Think about it: Almost everything we do on a daily basis involves a spatial component.  Most people have a GPS enabled phone or device they use daily.  When we geo-tweet (location-based post),  rate a restaurant or update our (location-based) status on one of the many social sites available today we are adding data to one or more GIS data sources. Who doesn't like to explore the earth with Google Earth? Google Earth is a free and highly used GIS application.  Geography and place are both important and natural to people.....who what when where and why are familiar questions we tend to ask and base decisions on (big and small).  Our past, present and future are dictated by place (as a component of many) making GIS an integral part of society.

Who uses GIS? How? I like to direct folks to ESRI's Industry page http://www.esri.com/industries.html