Build Your GIS Skills

Explore GIS courses for the professional development and map skills educators need to incorporate GIS technology into your teaching.

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Learn about GIS

Use maps to enrich lessons with engaging and interactive content, complete reports and projects with your students, or teach them about a geographic information system (GIS). Get started by building your foundational skills with maps. For projects and GIS courses, progress into more technical GIS work.

Foundational skills for classroom GIS success

These short videos teach you how to use maps in MapMaker. Get practice by following the steps and trying them yourself. The basic skills can be learned using a web browser without additional software or an account. Upon completion, you’ll be ready to teach with a map.

  • Map navigation and basemaps

    5 minutes
    Get familiar working with a map in both 2D and 3D. Pan, zoom, search, use bookmarks, and change the basemap. 

    Learn to navigate a map

  • Map interpretation

    5 minutes
    Learn to read a map and use its metadata and legend to understand what it shows. Discover common geographic patterns.

    Learn to read a map

  • Location

    5 minutes
    Describe “where” using both relative and absolute terminology.

    Learn how to talk about location

  • Scale

    5 minutes
    Understand the impact of the relative size of the items on a map and how to pick appropriate maps for teaching topics.

    Learn to understand scale

  • Layers and data

    8 minutes
    Learn to manipulate layers of related data to explore them. Interact with them as a whole and with the individual features they contain.

    Explore layers and data

  • Sketch on a map

    3 minutes
    Add information to a map by drawing on it.

    Learn to sketch on a map

  • Measure distance, area, and elevation

    6 minutes
    Explore size and distance using tools to measure in 2D and 3D. Analyze elevation profiles to see terrain.

    Learn to measure distance and area
    Explore elevation

  • Save a static map

    1 minute
    Create an image or a PDF of your map and use it in a report or assignment.

    Learn to save your work
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Take an on-demand web course

Use a map for classroom instruction | 4 hours

Take this course to practice using maps and learn a method to interpret and discuss maps with students. Earn a certificate upon completion.

Start the course
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Apply your skills in classroom activities

Find ready-to-use lessons covering a wide range of subjects. These activities incorporate maps to bring content standards to life.

Explore available lessons
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Elective: Map authoring

Prerequisite: Foundational skills
Take the next step and learn to make and save an interactive map of your own.

  • Get an account

    You need an account to save data and the interactive maps you make.

    Sign up

  • Customize a map

    Add information as layers and sketches. Create pop-ups to display information important to your map. 

    Make your first map

  • Share your interactive map

    The map you made can be kept private or shared with students, colleagues, or the world. Use ArcGIS StoryMaps or create an app to share a focused experience.

    Share a map

  • Advanced map editing

    Change symbology, filter data, and create custom visualizations through code.

    Take your map further
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Elective: Design and collect your own data

Prerequisites: Foundational skills | Map authoring
We are surrounded by data. Learn how to take data from the world around you and bring it into a map to solve real-world problems.

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Elective: Gain insight through analysis

Prerequisites: Foundational skills | Map authoring

Analysis turns data into information. Understand what the map is communicating. From visual analysis to specialized spatial analysis tools, get more from your maps.

Try analysis
A country map in blues and grays overlaid with a pattern of radiating lines demonstrating relative drive time distance between destinations

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