Week 4 Sharing GIS Maps and Data

This week's lab was a fun introduction into using basemaps from ArcGIS online in your desktop application, using the search feature to locate tools and data within ArcDesktop, creating a custom map package, troubleshooting any errors and ultimately sharing the map via ArcGIS online.  We also learned how to create a map from scratch on ArcGIS online.  Finally, we learned to use the layer to KML conversion tool to create a KML file for use in Google Earth.  I've shown a quick overview here of the map I created using ArcDesktop: 

I'm also including a link to my ArcGIS Online Map:  http://arcg.is/1ZZTjKz

I chose to create a map of my top ten favorite parks in Florida.  These parks are all beautiful and offer many amenities such as hiking trails, biking trails, picnic areas and in many cases camping, swimming, kayaking and snorkeling opportunities.  Some are free and others charge a minimal fee.  Since the parks I selected were throughout the state, I wanted to choose a symbol that would work at the data frame scale of 4,622,324 (this scale showed the entire State of Florida).  Since a few of my choices were in clustered groups and would have been difficult to distinguish if I had used the same symbol I chose to use a color ramp for distinction.  I chose a ramp that used different colors with red being my most favorite and green being the least.  This made the points much easier to see on the map.  Having the ability to share maps with both users who have GIS software applications and those without is a great feature.  I prefer using ArcDesktop since it has much more functionality than its online counterpart.  It's also nice to be able to export to Google Earth and have the attribute data intact.  This would be a great feature to create a Google Earth map of specific projects within a department.  For example, we have both capital and commercial projects in our engineering department but not all of our users have access to cadd or GIS; exporting the location and basic information for use in Google Earth would allow all users to quickly locate where our projects lie within the city.