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- Let's go outside! Scaffolded geocache activity & marking a second of latitude and longitude
- Scaffolded geocache target sheet (Iacocca Hall)
- Second of latitude and longitude coordinates (Iacocca Hall)
- Back inside: Debriefing, reviewing, discussing; what are the instructional implications? Things to address
- Investigating our geo-locating tools. We have a 'dry' tool (the hardware) and a 'wet' tool (our brains), plus organizing frameworks (cardinal directions; equator & PM)
- How does a GPS work?
- How did our GPS equate with the popular usage of the term? ("I don't need a map--I have a GPS in my car")
- What else can a GPS do?
- How did we orient ourselves outside? What cues did we use?
- Did we think in terms of N/S/E/W or Eq/PM? Did anyone make an 'airplane'?
- Investigating the display & markup tool (Google Earth): What does that file look like? How did I make it? How can you make one yourself?
- kml file of scaffolded geocache locations for Iacocca Hall; kml file of second of latitude and longitude locations.
- A gallery of more advanced KML files
- Lewis & Clark expedition (by Natalie Green, 2008)
- Morris Canal (by Doug Scott, 2009)
- Constitutional Convention locations (by Jeff Snyder, 2010)
- Cuban Missile Crisis data (by Yuanyuan Zhang, 2011)
- Native American groups circa Jamestown (from the Virginia Center for Digital History)
- Extending the activity: Geospatial awareness/skills --> inquiry --> community investigation.
- Broughal 'sewers' unit -- view the full documentation , if you wish
- Local history activity on Henry Noll. We've documented it via a Wikipedia entry ; see also the Lehigh "Beyond Steel " archive project
- Trees, cars, and carbon activity at William Penn Elementary -- view relevant links here.
- Remaining time: Playing with Google Earth
- And an FYI: What we did was not geocaching, it was a scaffolded geocache. See geocaching.com for the real thing.
- Investigating our geo-locating tools. We have a 'dry' tool (the hardware) and a 'wet' tool (our brains), plus organizing frameworks (cardinal directions; equator & PM)
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- Housekeeping
- Everyone is launched in CourseSite -- don't forget to keep up with WTL
- How is everyone for software?
- Google Earth
- AEJEE
- My World (using trial download)
- Opening discussion of assignments: What do you have in mind for your Google Earth assignment?
- Conceptual work: Getting started in Google Earth, AEJEE, and My World
- Organizing framework for geospatial tools: LINIQES: Load, interface, navigate, inspect, query, edit, save
- Google Earth
- Load
- Mix of client-side and server-side data.
- Satellite imagery: What are we looking at? Mix of current and dated material (see imagery date in lower left); it's only as good as "they" let you have (e.g., contrast One Observatory Circle vs. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW)
- Layers -- my recommendation is to turn OFF as much as possible. But I do like leaving 3-D buildings on...sometimes turns up fun surprises (for example, Amsterdam!).
- File > Open to load a .kml or a .kmz. For our demo, we'll use this file that I created for TLT 406. It's interesting b/c it has points, lines, associated images, etc.
- Interface
- Sidebar vs. display area vs. toolbar
- Sidebar on and off
- Navigation tools on, off, or auto
- Sidebar fields: Search, My Places, Layers
- Navigate
- Search box, or
- Double-click on an item in a list (Search or My Places)
- Double-click on any point on the globe to go there.
- Navigation tools: Tilt/pan, move NSEW, zoom in/out
- Inspect
- Single-click to open up info box.
- Right-click and select "Properties" or "Get Info" -- gives more access to point/line/polygon data (e.g., lat/lon, URL of any imported images). More importantly, you can EDIT items in this mode (see below)
- Query
- Actually, not much we can do here beyond typing in search terms.
- Some of the other tools are handy--use the ruler to measure, use the time-of-day feature to look at shadows, historical imagery to see earlier images, and the newest Easter egg that I've found: Show elevation profile (draw a path and right-click it!)
- (And of course Google Earth is not just Earth -- View > Explore gives you options of Earth, Sky, Moon, and Mars!)
- Edit
- Add something new: either
- Search for it and then drag it into My Places and work on it, or
- Click on Add Placemark, Add Polygon, or Add Path.
- Editing something once it's been created: Open up Properties (or Info) and modify.
- Add something new: either
- Save
- For our purposes: Right-click the item, folder, or file name and "Save Place As"
- You can also
- Save out snapshopts
- Record a tour
- Move into Google Maps
- Load
- AEJEE - Note that this runs on Java, so it requires a Java Runtime Environment...and some patience.
- Load
- All client-side data. We'll start by loading a blend of demo, downloaded, and self-generated data.
- Loading demo data: File > open > us_hd.axl. (In case you need to browse to this: The file path is ESRI\AEJEE\Data.) What you're looking at: spreadsheets rendered visually. But we'll get to this in "Inspect"
- All client-side data. We'll start by loading a blend of demo, downloaded, and self-generated data.
- Interface
- Similar to Google Earth: tools across the top, left-hand layers, main area = display
- Note importance of layers
- Turn on/off
- Re-order (e.g., pull cities layer down in the stack)
- Navigate: Move about the map in at least three ways
- Drag the map around
- Zoom in/out
- Zoom to full extent or active layer
- BEWARE getting zoomed in or out too far -- correct using "Zoom to" tools (select layer and then zoom to it)
- Inspect
- Identify tool ('i') -- can be hard to use unless you're properly zoomed in.
- Finder (Binoculars)
- Try looking in the 'cities' layer for 'Denver'
- Repeat this for 'San' -- select all the results and look at them on the map. What was expected? What was a surprise?
- Query
- Query-builder: Try POP_CLASS = 10. Repeat with POP_CLASS = 9, POP_CLASS >= 9
- Table of results and displays on map.
- Edit
- Modify visuals
- Right-click cities and select 'Properties'
- Code cities by POP_CLASS, all one size, use color to differentiate ranks (e.g., red for highest rank -- largest cities -- and green for lowest rank)
- Right-click states and select 'Properties'
- Bring up 'Labels' tab and select STATE_NAME
- Modify data -- all done in spreadsheet editor
- Add new fields to existing layers: add a column, don't make the new column name more than 10 characters! Save as tab-delimited text
- Creating new layers: MUST edit outside of AEJEE, bring it in.
- Can add point data fairly easily -- just give it a lat and a lon
- Adding lines or polygons is much trickier. Take a look at the demo files of 10grid_hd.axl and 10gridpn_hd.axl to get a sense of this.
- Modify visuals
- Save
- Saves out as ArcXML (axl) files; viewable in Arc products.
- HOWEVER: Note that each project file is pretty tiny (just a couple kilobytes) -- they're referencing the REAL data sources, down in the data folders. So if you're trying to move data around, move both the project file and the data sources.
- Load
- Transitioning from AEJEE to My World: Just to demo the limitations of AEJEE, let's load some non-demo data
- Here are files with the streets for our immediate surroundings. Note that part of the challenge in using AEJEE is just file management....
- Lehigh County streets ) and
- Northampton County Country streets
- Lehigh County streets ) and
- WHAT TO DO WITH THESE FILES
- Download them all to the same folder / location, make sure you know how to find them.
- Hit the "Add data..." button (between 'Print' and 'Remove layer') and browse to where you stored the data; you should see the .shp files there. Select them and they will become new layers.
- And here is our scaffolded geocache data as tab-delimited text. Save this file to your machine, then do View > Add Event Theme. Browse to where the .txt file is, select it. BE SURE to specify 'lon' as the X Field, and 'lat' as the Y field.
- Given that this is pretty boring (b/c we can't see Iacocca Hall -- we don't have the satellite image here, and we don't have a polygon for Iacocca), you can also look at some (very dirty) sewer data for the Southside: sewers.txt (htp://coexs.dept.lehigh.edu:16080/~tch207/broughal_geospatial/data/sewers.txt), same process as before.
- Here are files with the streets for our immediate surroundings. Note that part of the challenge in using AEJEE is just file management....
- My World
- Load
- Here, everything is built in: The "Construct" tab is where you assemble your data. You can add your own custom data, but for the moment, just
- Set the Library to "United States"
- Pull the following to the "Layer List" column: U.S. States, Counties, Rivers, Major Highways -- whatever you like.
- To get our geocache data: Do File > Import Layer From File. Browse to wherever you stored the file, and note that this program is a little smarter -- given lat and lon, it recognizes them automatically.
- Here, everything is built in: The "Construct" tab is where you assemble your data. You can add your own custom data, but for the moment, just
- Interface: You have the usual menus, but the tabs are the key
- "Construct" is where you assemble the dataset
- "Visualize" gets you more screen space and lets you see what's in each data layer. This is also a good place to re-order / re-stack layers, adjust colors, icons, turn layers on/off, etc. (You can do these in "Construct" as well, but you'll have a more cramped screen.)
- "Analyze" is where you run your queries.
- "Edit" lets you change your data set or add new layers from your own data.
- Navigation:
- The same tools and concepts apply: drag, zoom, zoom-to-active
- Important new tool: Step forward / step back among views
- Inspect: You still have an Inspect tool, but you can do a lot more browsing using the records fields to the right.
- Query
- This is actually pretty different: The Analyze tab is where you do this, and it's all split out by function. Note that this tool lets you do a lot of math (calculations, graphs) as well as maps. For example: Figure out a series of steps to see if the %age of older persons really is higher in Florida, Arizona, etc.
- Another bit of added value: You can save your queries / analyses as new layers. For students, this is VERY handy.
- Edit
- Obviously, the Edit tab is the place to be. Double-click on a layer and you can see the spreadsheet, add new records (entries) or new fields (characteristics to existing records).
- You can make an entirely new layer (points, lines, polygons, etc.) by clicking the "Create A New, Empty Layer" button (the sheet-of-paper looking thing)
- Save
- The important thing here is to do "Save Project As..." to preserve (a) the integrity of the original data, and (b) whatever changes / analyses you've made.
- Load
- Closure: More thinking about assignments
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