The Why of the Where: Water and Environment

Introduction:  The new Why of Where series moves beyond “technology training” to project training using advanced tools. Moving beyond simple point and click operations, this series is designed to assist students through the “process of analysis” to improve their skills in project development using ArcGIS. Each school will send a team of 3 or 4 students who plan to start a project in one of four themes: history, disasters, health, or water (choose the appropriate workshop). Teams from each school will begin each course with a guided, pre-packaged project and will personalize this project to fit their local needs. These projects will then be published online as Story Maps to support their local communities and to share with other students throughout EAST. Students attending these workshops are expected to continue, customize, and grow their project upon return to their school. CAST staff will provide regular post-workshop support and follow-up with students to assist, review, and encourage them in their projects. Online maps from the students’ projects will be featured on the EAST website.

DESCRIPTION:  Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “where does my water come from? Is it clean? How do I determine the quality of the water I drink? What makes it clean or not? Is it healthy for fish and aquatic life?” Using ArcGIS, you can do all that and more. In this course, students will analyze public water sources and water quality in their own communities to develop a project framework that can be reused in later projects. Students will be presented with a series of questions, as well as coming up with some of their own, which can be answered using ArcGIS. Their data and results will be compiled as a series of map layers in ArcGIS Online, shared with the EAST community and the public. After completing this course, students will have knowledge of advanced geospatial techniques that can be used to develop future projects.

ITEMS TO BRING:  N/A

PRE-REQUISITES:  Since students will be working together in teams from each school, at least one student from each team will need to be experienced with basic ArcGIS skills, and will need to teach their teammate(s) the basics of ArcGIS (how to add data, how to navigate, etc.) prior to the workshop. The Why of Where workshop series are intermediate- to advanced-level training.

NOTE:  Trainers will be unable to cover beginning-level skills in the workshop.

Possible paths for learning introductory ArcGIS skills:

• Attending an earlier Community Mapping workshop (last year).
• Completion of Community Mapping Online or the GPS with GIS Online courses at EAST Geospatial Online
• Completion of an introductory ArcGIS course on the ESRI Virtual Campus (Learning ArcGIS Desktop; Getting to Know ArcGIS….)
• Working through an introductory book, such as The GIS 20 Essential Skills (ESRI Press).

CAST staff are also identifying other introductory resources, particularly for younger students. Please keep an eye on the Facilitator Discussion portion of the Forums for updates.

Feel free to contact CAST staff with questions regarding meeting prerequisites.