Reading/Working through chapter 1 was a nice review from ArcGIS and week 1. Having a chance to remember all the features that GIS can offer was a good way to get back into the mindset. It was also interesting to learn how WebGIS has evolved with cloud based computing over time, going from stand alone units, to one way communication, to full communication, and finally more complex networks managed by portals. Some of the terms and links in the website have changed since the publication of the book, but nothing unsolvable.
Chapter 2 was again a nice review of the intro module from week 1 and showed a lot of expansion onto those ideas. The living atlas looks like it will be a very valuable tool and I’m guessing I’ll be using it often. Tutorials went the same as the first chapter, no big problems.
Based on these chapters, I had an idea for an app that records wildflowers and their locations in parks using crowdsourced data. Users could upload a picture to the app, and their phone would record the coordinates, automatically uploading that data as well. It could also be linked with an app like Inaturalist to identify the flowers. This could be used for hobby naturalists or Natural Resources workers or anything in between