Hello and welcome. If you're interested in learning about mapping and Geographic Information Systems or GIS, then you've come to the right place. I've designed a series of courses that anyone can take. You don't have to have any background in geography or GIS whatsoever. Just an interest in learning about them. These courses will provide you with a set of skills and tools that can be applied in virtually any field. GIS allows you to map virtual anything that exists on the surface of the Earth, and then examine what you've mapped to look for things like clusters or relationships over distance and time, to be able to see things that you might not have been able to understand or notice any other way. In each course, I'll give you some examples of datasets, and methods, and how they're used. But one thing that's a key emphasis in all of these courses is I really want to teach you how to use your own data sets for your own interests in your own locations. For all these courses, we'll be using ArcGIS, which is powerful software from our industry partner Esri. But there's more to using GIS than just knowing what to click on. It's really important that you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it, and I really think it's important for you to understand the underlying theory and concepts, everything that an aspiring GIS analysts should know. In the first course, you'll learn how to map the locations of something on the surface of the earth, and then to take those locations that are recorded on a three-dimensional globe and flatten them down onto a two dimensional screen or a sheet of paper, and then be able to create your own data as well. In the second course, you'll learn how to find data online that you can use for your own projects, and to look at the metadata for those datasets which is the information about them to evaluate them and make sure they are appropriate for what you need. You'll also learn how to map addresses and XY coordinates such as latitude and longitude, as well a bit about map design. So much of what you're going to do with GIS is going to be results that are communicated in the form of a map, so it's really important that you learn some of the fundamentals about how to do that effectively. In the third course, you will learn how to filter data using queries to find just the parts of the datasets that you need. You'll also learn how to analyze that data using both vector and raster methods, and you'll learn how to download and use satellite imagery which is a rich source of geographic data. At the end of each of the first three courses, you'll have the chance to complete a project to apply what you've learned, and together, the projects from these first three courses will help prepare you for the capstone project which is the final course. This is when you get to put it all together and you have an opportunity to be creative about the dataset you're using and the methods you're using, and to showcase all of that using an Esri Story Map, which is a website that's a collection of images, maps, video, and text that allows you to really show off the things that you've learned and the things that you've created, and a Story Map is a great way of being able to share that as well with friends, family, coworkers, or potential clients. My name is Don Boyes, and I'm a professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, which is often ranked the top university in Canada and among the top 20 in the world. I've been using GIS for over 30 years. Before I was a professor, I was a consultant that worked with lots of different clients, and industry, and government on all kinds of different GIS projects. I have to admit, the thing I always enjoyed the most though was training and teaching people about how to use a GIS for themselves. Here at the university, I've taught thousands of different students from all kinds of different backgrounds, and I'm really excited to see you get started and to help you learn more about mapping and GIS.
