The Why of Where: History and Culture

The 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 or are already working on a project in one of four themes: history, disasters, health, or water (choose the appropriate workshop). Teams from each school will work on their projects while having access to and being assisted by GIS professionals. 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.

Interested in creating your own online historical atlas designed specifically for your community? In this course, students will investigate various aspects of their local history through advanced spatial analysis. This training will move students from performing simple point and click operations to creating a Historical Atlas of their local communities using ArcGIS, which will then be published online and will be seen as part of the overall EAST Historical Atlas on the EAST website. After completing this training, students will understand how to gather, manipulate, and analyze historical data as well as understand the steps involved in project development using ArcGIS. This will in turn provide the students with a valid framework to develop future projects.  

ITEMS TO BRING:  N/A

PRE-REQUISITE: Every student that comes to these workshops needs to have some very basic GIS skills. We have identified a short, free online training course from ESRI that covers everything you need to know, and allows you to print a certificate that shows you have these basic skills. Please follow these steps:

1. Your facilitator needs to have an ArcGIS Online Organization account established. Please contact us if help is needed.
2. Each student will need an ArcGIS Online account in your Organization (see Step 1).
3. Each student will need to take the online ESRI training course "Getting Started with GIS" (http://training.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm?fa=catalog.webcoursedetail&courseid=2500). Here's the great part: if a student already knows some GIS basics, they can skip parts they know and go to the content which is new to them.
4. At the end of "Getting Started with GIS" there is a 10-question exam. Each student will need to pass the exam (8 out of 10 questions correct), and save the customized certificate as a PDF file.
5. E-mail the certificate PDF files for each student to east_support@cast.uark.edu before coming to training. 

All attending students must complete the above preparation prior to training.