Week 4- ArcGIS Online

Our lab this week in Intro2GIS included a little ESRI online training to introduce us to ArcGIS Online. My previous GIS experience was all on a classified network and one of the first functions we disabled was ArcGIS online. After going through the ESRI training I can say we really missed out by not being able to use the ArcGIS Online function. It was neat to see all of the data that is already shared publicly and it was even better to see how a company could create a user group to share information within the company.

The first task was to modify a map package and the second task was to create and optimize a map package. Both packages were saved on ArcGIS Online and shared publicly. I'm not sure either of these packages are of much value to someone searching through all the data that is available but the skills we learned are very useful. I think this could also be a great tool for collaborative group projects because the files can be saved and protected or they can be editable. The two screenshots below are pictures of both of the map packages I created this week.