The first time I opened the ArcGIS application I was a little bit rushed because the only thing I could think about was a midterm I had to take the next day. Because my learning ability was not up to par, I wasn’t paying very much attention. I also did not have a USB drive so I just went through some of the steps without saving. I thought the program was intimidating because I was stressed and barely understood what exactly I was doing. The tutorial also seemed way too long for me to focus and retain any information so I went through one of the exercises and went to go study another subject. Later the next week, I also had midterms to study for and therefore did not put a lot of thought into the assignment.
However, once my midterms had ended and I was free to do as I wished, I looked into the ArcMap assignment. First, I read through the tutorial without the program. This really helped because when I got to the lab to follow the steps it was a lot easier because I already had a sense of what to do. It was also a lot easier because it seemed a lot shorter than it originally seemed. It was like my second time going through the process.The next day I did the tutorial one more time and it was even easier. Although I had some problems finding some files (because I was getting ahead of myself and forgot the steps I took the day before) I was able to successfully finish the tutorial. I had also gotten a USB drive to save my work this time because I knew I would have to put it on my blog later. This made working with the ArcGIS even easier because I knew that I wasn’t going to lose my maps. By reading over the entire tutorial and then going through the steps twice, I believe that that really helped in making me more familiar to the program. Although I’m not an expert, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
ArcMap can be of significant use to everyone. It certainly comes in handy when discussing future plans like predicting environmentaal impact. In the case of the airport noise contour map in the tutorial, we can see all the areas that will be affected by the airplane noise. From looking at this map, urban planners will be able to tell what buildings will need sound proof windows. Also, it is of great use when looking at environmental impact. People can map out things like carbon dioxide emissions, logging, or animal habitats and calculate where and to what extent an impact has on the environment. The map maker has the ability to upload information to the map in order to explain what the map is trying to portray. By doing this, he allows many people to understand the concepts the map is representing.
However, although ArcMap has a lot of potential because it can hold, display and organize a lot of information, it can be very difficult to understand. Although the tutorial was very straight forward, some of the directions were difficult to understand and I made a lot of mistakes. It can be very frustrating to learn. It took me two tries to get what the map was actually displaying and when I did get it, it was still not completely clear. Also, when you have the power of making the maps, you have authority over what goes into it. A lot of information could be left out by this and therefore make some concepts to readers unclear. For example if I had left out the airport, many people would be confused as to what they were looking at. So it is very important to include the important information and only leave out what it unnecessary.
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