Interesting in learning GIS

October 28, 2005 12:13 PM

I'm interested in learning more about GIS. I took a few one hour classes using ArcGIS at the university where I attend (Cornell), but the available GIS classes are mounds of work and don't fit into my schedule. Are there any good resources that i could find on the net to self-teach myself? And for that matter, any GIS programs that aren't as expensive?
posted by jare2003 to Education (10 answers total)

At my school, students with a reason to learn GIS can get free access to many of ESRI's online courses. Try talking to a faculty member who teaches GIS (or someone who runs whatever GIS facilities you have) to see if Cornell has the same deal.

As far as cheap(er) GIS programs go, check out Idrisi. It's produced by a spinoff of Clark University's Geography program, and has a different orientation than ArcGIS. For instance, it has many more interesting analysis and modeling tools built into it than ArcGIS does. If your interests are using GIS in an academic setting or just learning more about the conceptual ideas behind GIS, then it is certainly worth exploring. However, if you're interested in finding a GIS job, ArcGIS is decidely more useful to know.
posted by mollweide at 12:32 PM on October 28, 2005

Arc/Info is very widely used and yet is a bitch to learn. Courses are almost essential to get started, then practice, practice, practice.

The less powerful ArcView is even more widely spread and a much easier way to learn the basic principles of GIS than jumoing straight into Arc/Info. Some jobs will require full-blown A/I skills, others will be happy if you are conversent with ArcView since they would never let most people mess around under the hood the way that Arc/Info allows/requires.

Idrisi is an oldie but a goodie. Haven't used it for a while but it used to be raster only. used to be essentially free

GRASS was also free, though ran only on UNIX flavours. its extremely powerful and pretty widely used. Developed by the US military. Also used to be raster only, and you are best advised to learn both vector and raster applications.

There is a free program called TNT-Lite which is fairly straightforward and could get you started.

Being conversant in one package is a good thing, but you should know that those skill sets are not as readily transferable from one package to another. Arc to GRASS is a fairly big step -- many of the principles are the same but the actual implementation is so different that you slip halfway down the learning curve.

I second the reccomendation to see if your uni has access to ESRI courses. Also check to see if they have a site licence for Arc/Info or similar, then see if you can get an account and x-window in remotely or whatever. Often the licence will come with a cap on simultaenous users, so if you promise to use it outside of school hours and not take up space in the lab it might help
posted by Rumple at 1:18 PM on October 28, 2005

How you go about learning to use this tool depends on what kind of data you're trying to map, I think. GIS is hard to learn because you have to learn it in the context of other data collection and analysis tools, and how all these things fit together in a research design.
posted by rschram at 1:20 PM on October 28, 2005

As a student, you can also get your own one-year license for ArcGIS and some extensions for about $100. I think they'll also kick in one-year subscription to a trade publication or two. Below is part of their reply to my inquiry in September of 2004. I'd recommend calling their customer service too. They're very helpful: 1-800-447-9778.

ArcView 3.3, ArcView 8.3, ArcView 9.0 permanent license is available to students meeting the requirements at $250 per license. Their extensions are also available at $150 each. An alternative to the permanent license is a one year time out license at $100. With ArcView 8.3 and 9.0 the one year time out license includes Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst and Geostatistical Analyst, it does not come with any documentations or media packages.

Additionally, students can receive a 40% discount on Virtual Campus courses. For further information on the courses that are offered, please visit: http://campus.esri.com
posted by Oddly at 1:21 PM on October 28, 2005

Also, look on this site for free software and info. If you got the Arc route, then the ESRI forums/lists are really helpful -- there is a huge community of Arc users and misery loves company, ya know.

Further to what rschram says above, the best way to learn is to have a real project to work on. Maybe learn a few basics and then find a prof who has a dataset you can play with in a directed way.
posted by Rumple at 1:25 PM on October 28, 2005

Talk to your local 911 agency - they can usually be found through the county sherriff's department and offer to volunteer hours to learn the GIS process. Invaluable, real-world work.

Plus, once you gain proficiency there are numerous, lucrative job opportunities.
posted by TeamBilly at 1:38 PM on October 28, 2005

Mapping Hacks
posted by Eothele at 2:32 PM on October 28, 2005

As someone who has to develop using ESRI software, its the standard but it sucks. ESRI is amazingly slow and often times counter intuitive, but its the path of least resistance in most cases.

ERDAS IMAGINE is nice and has a lot of feature overlap (and works and is fast), but it focuses more on photogrammetry.

I picked up basic use of the ESRI stuff without courses (but with a guy right next to me who knows it very well). Its not too bad if you don't mind spending a bit of time finding a way to do something. Save your work all the time though, because its easy to screw up.
posted by devilsbrigade at 4:30 PM on October 28, 2005

I looked at Manifold, which had some advantages. It wouldn't do what I needed it for, but for someone who's learning GIS, I think it's worth a look.
posted by atchafalaya at 7:55 PM on October 28, 2005

Kind of late in the comments, but MapMaker is free as well. I use it for work and it's fairly easy to learn.
posted by bigmusic at 10:53 AM on March 28, 2006