Mapping Your Community:
An Introduction to GIS and Community Analysis
This One-day workshop is designed for social service providers, researchers, planners or anyone that performs community analysis. The majority of participants come from Government Agencies, Non-Profit Organizations, Environmental Groups, and Universities. We teach our Mapping Your Community: An Introduction to GIS and Community Analysis workshop in all major cities.
Please click on the links below to find out specific information about each workshop.
Mapping Your Community: An Introduction to GIS and Community Analysis (Print General Flyer)
**New 2010 Workshops Just Announced**
Louisiana Workshops
Oklahoma Workshops *NEW*
Colorado Workshops *NEW*
Massachusetts Workshops *NEW*
Alaska Workshops *NEW*
Indiana Workshops *NEW*
Ohio Workshops *NEW*
Workshop Overview
Participants will learn to use ArcGIS 9.3.1 to do the following:
Creating thematic maps
Participants will learn how to easily create
thematic maps of their own data and display
spatial trends in information.
Address mapping (geocoding)
Participants will learn to map addresses of their
clients, their projects or incidents.
Download and Map Census & American Community Survey data
Participants will learn to extract and map current Census data such as poverty, race, language, population,
transportation, education and workforce characteristics.
Participants will also learn to:
Conduct spatial queries
Download free shapefiles
Create well designed maps
- Mapping techniques transferable to all other communities.
- Exercises are designed for beginners.
- Intermediate Excel skills required.
Workshop Materials
- Comprehensive workbook (75 pages), which includes the presentation, exercises and reference worksheets
- ArcGIS (ArcView 9.3.1) software 60-day trial CD set
Workshop Agenda
Lesson 1
Learn the basic functions of ArcGIS
Setting up ArcMap
Adding data and geography layers
Working with Layouts
Lesson 2
Introduction to American Factfinder
Downloading Census and American Community Survey data to map
Downloading free geography files including tracts, zip codes, blocks and several others
Preparing Census tract data in Excel to import into ArcGIS
Lesson 3
Joining data and geography files
Creating thematic (color shaded) maps to display data
Working with legends and interval breaks
Lesson 4
How to do common spatial queries
Lesson 5
Where to download free business addresses
Geocoding (address mapping)
Lesson 6
Elements of good maps including colors, fonts and map must haves
Critique of several maps
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