Chapter 1: The first chapter was all about showing me the ropes on the different settings of ArcGIS. I learned how to nagviate the ribbon and the contents plane which made everything else I had to find much easier. I liked the each tutorial focused on one aspect of a map, and went in depth on not only how to create things, but also how to find new things and go back and change mistakes. I also liked that throughout chapter 1 the map stayed the same, I just worked on different parts of it. I found that ArcGIS was very easy to navigate, especially with the tutorial book because it was very easy to understand. At first I found it a little tenuous but then I realized that having me do the same steps so many times made everything easier in the long run because it became muscle memory. I really liked the section of each tutorial called “your turn” because it allowed me to see what I remembered and what I still needed more help with. Overall, chapter 1 was a good introduction to ArcGIS and gave me the necessary tools I needed to be able to move on to the next two chapters.
Chapter 2: This chapter used the information I was taught previously and built off of it to explain new ideas and concepts. Most of what I learned in this chapter was about symbology. I picked colors and symbols, as well as labels and pop ups. I was unable to edit the symbology for “over age 60 using food stamps” despite my efforts to restart the computer, and troubleshoot. From looking at my peer’s posts, it seems I was not the only one who had this problem. I also couldn’t find a button called “out beyond” but I was able to still achieve making my popups appear and disappear through the visibility range> max/min> <current>. In the tutorials in this chapter I was able to learn how to separate my data by different categories and figure out how to label things differently based on what I wanted the readers to learn from my map. I also learned how to create a dot density map, and how to change the features so it looks the way you want. This chapter had a lot of information, but each tutorial took information from the last, which made it flow nicely and easy to understand.
Chapter 3: This chapter is the one I found the most interesting. I liked being able to go from my maps I had created to making a blog and importing data to a website. Seeing everything I had done so far come together was really cool. The first tutorial was long and had a lot of content to cover but it was also very helpful. Learning how to compare two maps was very helpful, as well as comparing thee data in both of them to see the relationship between them. This chapter caused me more problems than the others. I felt that I wasn’t always sure I was doing the right thing but being able to use the pictures in the book to compare was very helpful. I felt that creating and editing a dashboard was the most helpful thing I learned in this chapter because it allowed me to interact with real data, as well as upload and change things. Sharing my map and my blog was a cool first step into seeing how much can actually be learned through GIS. THis chapter gave me insight into how GIS is used in the real world and all of its different programs and uses.