Month: November 2014

This post will be a short update of some of the challenges I have run into with services available to students on campus in relation to servers and Esri’s ArcGIS.

I’ve been working on two projects this semester which pair historical maps and planning documents for the city of Atlanta with present day data using Esri’s ArcGIS Online. One of the limitations of ArcGIS Online is that you are not able to host raster images on the Esri servers-you need to host them on your own servers. Server upkeep and support for ArcGIS was previously provided by a the technical advisor/GIS coordinator in the Department of Geosciences. For a number of reasons, this position is currently empty within department and, to my knowledge, there is no one at any level of campus providing the necessary support to GSU’s established GIS. Since the completion of these projects hinges on the ability to host this data and given the mission of CURVE for supporting the research and digital digital scholarship of students, I think it would be appropriate to explore possibilities of a server being available to students as a service of CURVE.

This topic brings to light an interesting aspect of SIF that I had not previously considered–longevity:longevity in the sense that a project can continue once the current SIFs have graduated and moved on. To “continue” just doesn’t apply to a scenario where it has not yet been completed and the torch needs to be passed for the completion to be achieved-continue also means understanding how to update, migrate, or expand the project. Maybe the blogs can server as a point of reference for offering this type of longevity-but I am not so confident. I think it may be useful for each project to come with a “Final Report” at the time of its completion outlining the project in detail. This type of report would provide a safety net for avoiding any gaps in knowledge caused by a person leaving.

Thinking in terms of longevity, the SIF program will be able to provide services to the students, faculty, and staff at GSU without getting its foot stuck in any unintended creations of knowledge gaps along the way. Because, as has been demonstrated through my experience with the servers, these types of gaps that can cause real hindrances to our desire to be innovative on campus.

I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to Google Earth.

Google Earth is a virtual globe, that also serves as a map and geographical information program, which has been around since 2004. By mapping the Earth through collections of satellite imagery, aerial photography, and a 3D Globe and by offering additional capabilities such as viewing 3D buildings and landscapes, it makes for a fun and engaging user experience. Pin points can be added, symbology can be changed, information pop-ups can hold explanatory text or be embedded with videos. And the program is free and just requires a quick download to your desktop.

GE can create a special visualization experience in the classroom-especial through the creation of personalized tours. GE allows you to record tours as you zoom in and out between points, change perspectives, or even enter into street view (how-to video here). These tours could easily be incorporated into a lecture or group project.  You also have the ability to see historical imagery in some areas.

There are additional fun tools such as flight simulator and Ocean View. Did you know that you can see a 3D rendering of the Titanic using GE?

But that’s not all!

GE now lets you adventure to places you aspired to visit when you were a child with aspirations to be an astronaut: through the GE sky feature you can tour the galaxy. Visit the constellation of Orion, the  Moon and Mars.

There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to using this tool for visualization in your classroom. One additional note is that Google Earth looks amazing on the interactWall in CURVE. The touch capabilities are fantastic (try pulling up Paris or Las Vegas next time your work bring you there) and it really immerses you in the experience.

If you’d like some assistance in learning how to incorporate Google Earth into your classroom, feel free to send me an email (aboll1@gsu.edu) and set up an appoint to work with me at one of CURVE’s collaboration workstations. I can provide training, both one-on-one or for a group, to get you and your classroom on its way to engaging with space in an interactive, engaging way.

To continue on in my series of mapping tutorials for GSU students and faculty-I’d like to talk about geotagging photos. Knowing spatial location and relation of thing is becoming, for many fields, an important way to enhance understanding, goals, and outcomes.  This post will outline two software packages available to many in academic fields that can help visualize the spatial locations and relationships of our photos, ArcGIS and Adobe Lightroom.  Many of us take photos with our phones as the technology is ever increasing the number of megapixels and other key features.  Most smart phones have GPS as well which can be used to assign specific coordinates to each photo..  My fiancé has a DSLR camera that doesn’t have GPS, however for cameras without you can buy modules that have GPS receivers to do the same as smart phones.  For those with phones or cameras that cannot capture GPS coordinates, a simple hiking GPS will work because there is free software available (my fiancé recommends GPicSync) that will match image capture times with GPS ping times to get a relatively close coordinate match for your photos.  So no matter what type of phone, camera, or GPS device you have there are quick and simple ways to get coordinates assigned to your images.

Photos and GPS Coordinates

The first step is to capture the images and GPS coordinates, either in the same device, like smartphones or GPS capable cameras, or use a separate GPS device, such as those for hiking, to log coordinates in time along your journey.  For those using smart phones to capture images and coordinates at the same time the following links may help to locate the GPS features in your phones to make sure it’s activated.  Your individual phone brand and model likely have similar instructions and a quick google search would likely get you to the right settings.

http://support.sprint.com/support/tutorial/Turn_GPS_on_or_off_Apple_iPhone_5_64GB/440

49-158-3

http://support.sprint.com/support/tutorial/Turn_GPS_on_or_off_Samsung_Galaxy_Sreg_4_n

onSprint_Sparktrade/48285-158

For those needing to match GPS coordinate logs with photo captures here is the link to GPicSync (https://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/) where you can download the software and find how-to instructions for getting GPS coordinates embedded in your image data.

Once the photos have GPS coordinates embedded to each file we can begin to look at the two software packages for viewing and making maps of your photos.  First we will look at ArcGIS.

ArcGIS

ArcGIS is a very powerful software package not only for viewing but also editing other geographic data, whether that is points, like our photos, lines such as roads, or shapes such as buildings.  All of these types of spatial data can be imported into or created and edited within ArcGIS to produce maps.  Other tools within ArcGIS can also be utilized to measure important information related to your project (distances, populations, etc.).  To import photos into ArcGIS follow these steps:

1. Place the photos you have taken (with GPS coordinates embedded by the methods mentioned above) in a folder on your computer.
2. Open ArcGIS and go to the ArcToolbox under the geoprocessing drop down menu and navigate to ArcToolbox\Data Management Tools\Photos\Geotagged Photos to Points.
3. Once the Geotagged Photos to Points dialog box has opened click the “open folder icon” (folder with a little blue arrow above).  In the Input Folder window click the “connect to folder icon” (folder with black plus sign above).  Navigate to the folder where you stored the photos, single click on the folder and click Add.
4. Now back in the Geotagged Photo to Points dialog window select the folder where you want the output feature or layer file to be saved.
5. Uncheck the include Non-Geotagged Photos and Add Photos As Attachments selections.  Click Ok on the main dialog window and ArcGIS will add your photos to the Table of Contents as a new layer.  Now you should see a number of points on your map where each point represents a photo you took.  You can click the HTML popup icon and then click each of the points to display each photo at the associated point.
6. At this point you can add other data in the form of shapefiles, base maps, or other methods you know to enhance your map or provide geographic reference features for your photos.  The final step once you have your map created would be to export it to a file (pdf, jpg, etc.) or print it.

Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom is an Adobe product that is mostly devoted to photo viewing, organizing, and editing.  However a nice feature that was added in version 4 of the software (current version 5) is the map module.  This module allows photos to be viewed on a map simply by zooming and clicking on photo location pins.  To get to that point there are a few steps to go over first.  As before we want to be sure that our photos have GPS coordinates embedded, either at the time of capture with smartphones and certain cameras, or later with the GPicSync software.  Once we have the photos in one folder we can open up Lightroom and get started on importing and mapping our photos.

1. Open Lightroom and be sure you are in the library module (top right area of the program contains the modules).  From this screen click the import button in the lower left corner to bring up the import dialog.
2. The left column is for selecting your source folder so from here you will will navigate to the folder where you have our images stored.
3. Once the folder is selected you will see the photos added in the middle of the screen with a few options up at the top of this middle section. For the purposes of this exercise we want to make sure add is selected because this will add the photos to the Lightroom catalog.  The photos will be in the same location on the computer, Lightroom will just know where they are and have them loaded every time you open Lightroom.  Be sure to scroll through the photos and make sure they are all showing up and checked with the check mark in the upper left corner.
4. The right side is where the photos will be added to (catalog, another hard drive, flash drive, etc.).  For this excersie since we have the photos on our hard drive already and just want to add them to the Lightroom catalog (i.e. get Lightroom to recognize and know the photos location and data every time we open the program) we will want to be sure that the icon to the right of the arrow says My Catalog.

*For those who want to use Lightroom to manage all their photos, beyond this one project, the other features and options not discussed here can be learned by doing a quick Google or YouTube search for those specific features.

1. Under the My Catalog on the right hand side there are a few more options.  The File Handling and Apply During Import options are primarily for those using Lightroom to manage and edit their photos (change color, change contrast, add keywords, building previews, etc.).  For this exercise we will not change any of the default options.  If you would like to learn more a quick Google search should turn up a lot of great resources.
2. Finally click import at the lower right and Lightroom will begin adding your photos to the Lightroom Library.
3. Now that your photos have been added you can switch to the Map module by clicking on Map in the top right area of the program.  This will bring up a google map and your photos should show up where you took them with small yellow or orange pins.  By zooming in and out of this map using the scroll wheel on your mouse or the plus and minus signs at the bottom left of the map, Lightroom will begin to group or ungroup photos together as the spatial distance between them increases or decreases, respectively.  Hovering over the pins brings up a small thumbnail of the photo(s) that location.  Tools for changing the background map and other mapping features can be found under the View drop down menu.
4. From here the final step would be to display or print the map using Lightroom itself or by using the print screen feature (ctrl + print screen).

In conclusion, ArcGIS and Lightroom both offer ways of importing and viewing photos on a map.  ArcGIS has more editing options for adding other geographic data before exporting to a final map or other software.  Alternatively, Lightroom has less capability for editing and adding other geographic data but it can be helpful for organizing and editing large numbers of photos and keeping track of that information every time the program launches.  Depending on your projects, desired aesthetic, and preferred workflow either program can help to visualize photos and tell your story in a new way, with maps.