Mapper’s Delight. Boogie on in to our Fall GIS workshops.
Now what you hear is not a test, we’re mapping to the beat! With apologies to The Sugarhill Gang, I welcome you to our 2024 GIS workshop series. We can’t promise any beats or boogieing, but there will be mapping. Lots of it. And if you’re so inclined, plenty of “map” puns (map battle) to ponder.
This semester we’ll be learning common GIS tasks primarily using the desktop GIS software ArcGIS Pro, covering basic use and techniques that will get you comfortable and exploring on your own. If you’re interested in ArcGIS Online, we’ll briefly cover that in the last couple of sessions, and will do a deeper dive in the Spring. Not sure what the difference is? ArcGIS Pro is a Windows-only desktop program that you install on your (Windows) computer. ArcGIS Online is a web-based GIS platform that you access through a web browser on nearly any device. Mark Patterson sums it up well here. Still not sure? As always, feel free to ping us with any questions.
- Registration is required, please use the links below or check out our Events page to sign up.
- All sessions are one hour and assume participants have no previous experience using GIS. They will be hands-on demonstrations with step-by-step tutorials.
- Sessions will be taught on Wednesdays from 2PM to 3PM in Shannon 317 and virtually and are free and open to the UVA and larger Charlottesville community.
- We will provide laptops for in-person attendees. In-person registration is limited to the number of laptops we have available. However, if you’re waitlisted, please contact us at uvagis@virginia.edu. Virtual attendees please scroll to the bottom for information about accessing ArcGIS Pro.
September 11th - Making Your First Map with ArcGIS Pro
Here’s your chance to get started with geographic information systems software in a friendly, jargon-free environment. This workshop introduces the skills you need to make your own maps. Along the way you’ll get familiar with the desktop GIS application ArcGIS Pro, and a gentle introduction to cartography. You’ll leave with your own cartographic masterpieces and tips for learning more in your pursuit of mappiness at UVA.
September 18th - Putting Old Maps and Aerial Photos on Your Map: Georeferencing in ArcGIS Pro
Would you like to see historical maps overlaid on modern aerial photography? Do you need to extract features of a map for use in GIS? Georeferencing is the first step. We will show you how to take a scan of a paper map and align in it in ArcGIS.
September 25th - Getting Your Data on a Map
Do you have a spreadsheet of Lat/Lon coordinates you would like to see on a map? We will show you how to do that and more. ArcGIS Pro makes it easy to take your tabular data and generate stylized points on a map.
October 2nd - Points on Your Map: Street Addresses and More Spatial Things
Do you have a list of street addresses crying out to be mapped? Have a list of zip codes or census tracts you wish to associate with other data? We’ll start with addresses and other things spatial and end with points on a map, ready for visualization and analysis.
October 9th - Taking Control of Your Spatial Data: Editing in ArcGIS Pro
Until we perfect that magic “extract all those lines from this paper map” button we’re stuck using editing tools to get that job done. If you’re lucky, someone else has done the work to create your points, lines, and polygons but maybe they need your magic touch to make them better. This session shows you how to create and modify vector features in ArcGIS Pro. We’ll explore tools to create new points, lines, and polygons and to edit existing datasets.
October 16th - Easy Demographics
Need to make a quick demographic map? This workshop will show you how easily navigate Social Explorer. This powerful online application makes it easy to create maps with contemporary and historic census data and religious information.
October 23rd - Introduction to ArcGIS Online
With ArcGIS Online, you can use and create maps and scenes, access ready-to-use maps, layers and analytics, publish data as web layers, collaborate and share, access maps from any device, make maps with your spreadsheet data, customize the ArcGIS Online website, and view status reports.
October 30th - ArcGIS Story Maps
ArcGIS StoryMaps is a spatially enabled website/application builder that allows you to add narrative and multimedia context to your ArcGIS Online maps (or locational context to your narrative and multimedia content, depending on how your brain works). Whether telling a story, giving a tour or comparing historical maps, ArcGIS StoryMaps is an easy-to-use builder that creates polished presentations.
For virtual attendees:
Unfortunately, we cannot provide access to ArcGIS Pro to our virtual attendees that aren’t affiliated with the University. To be clear, ArcGIS Pro is NOT required to virtually attend the sessions, but it is required to complete the hands-on exercises from the first six sessions on your own. The final two sessions cover ArcGIS Online which is browser-based and can be made available to everyone.
- For our virtual non-UVA attendees, unfortunately, we’re unable to provide ArcGIS Pro licenses. Our suggestion would be to take advantage of the GIS computers in the Scholars’ Lab or one of the public computer labs on Grounds. If that’s not feasible, another option is to acquire a personal use license.
- For our virtual attendees with a Mac computer, ArcGIS Pro is not Mac compatible. For UVA affiliates, the simplest solution is to take advantage of UVA’s Remote Apps which provides access to Pro. There are several ways to run Windows on a Mac, including a multi-boot utility like BootCamp or a virtual machine, both of which require expertise we’re unfortunately unable to provide.