Massaro Week 2

Chapter 1: Something that I think is super interesting about ArcGIS Online is how many people you can connect with on it. Another thing that I think is super interesting is the fact that people are able to view, interact with, edit, and give you suggestions on maps that you have created. Something that we explored in 291 was using a hybrid of online and enterprise GIS. This was helpful because the enterprise was more specific to an individual and more detailed. But online, it is more interactive and widely used to communicate information. Something that I found a little confusing was the apps that you can create. Since I created my own app in the chapter, I was able to understand how it worked, but I’m still confused about how exactly it can be applied to certain things. 

Chapter 2: Overall, I very much enjoyed this chapter. Something that the book keeps mentioning is the use of smart-mapping. This is something that sounds super interesting, and that I would love to explore in the future. Something else that I think will be very useful in the future is the Living Atlas. I worked with this a little bit in 291, but I would like to see how it can be applied to GISOnline. Something that I really enjoyed about this chapter was the fact that we both got to create maps and a way to present them, and the data that they show. I will say that I am not as keen on the arrow symbols that they had us using to display the population growth. From the 3D perspective, the arrows were more useful, but from a 2D perspective, they made the map look a little cluttered and confusing. Additionally, when adding the zoom features for the maps into the sidecar, the arrows got smaller as we zoomed in. I feel like this defeated the whole purpose of zooming in to better display the data. An issue that I ran into when inserting the picture and Wikipedia page for the different states was that the state symbol or flag did not appear within the box. One other thing that annoys me when using the storytelling mode for GISOnline is that the font changes when you change it from a paragraph to a heading. I feel like this makes the project look messy and not as cohesive. 

An application based on the ideas from these two chapters would be a sort of campus tour map. This would use the applications from Chapter 1, where you can add descriptions and images for each of the buildings on campus. Additionally, this could be incorporated into ideas from Chapter 2 by creating a story that shows the history and growth of OWU over time. This could be in terms of an increase in student numbers, students within certain majors, or an increase in buildings since the campus first opened.