Tag: ArcGIS Online

ArcGIS Pro & ArcMap Training in Austin, TX

Last week, we traveled to Austin, TX to give a hands-on GIS training for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The idea behind the training was to deepen the staff’s proficiency using ArcGIS Pro/Desktop and ArcGIS Online.

Here’s an inside look at the three-day training at AIR’s Austin office.

Day one, we focused entirely on:

  • Building up the TEA team’s skills with ArcGIS Desktop, and Addressing some of their current needs at the agency.
  • Day one started well with an assessment that asked each team member to demonstrate their current proficiency with ArcGIS Desktop.
    This ensured each person had all of the basics down before we moved onto advanced analytics.
  • We spent the remainder of the day diving into toolboxes including editing, data management, and spatial analytics.

Day two welcomed AIR staff to the training. We split into advanced and intermediate groups and marched through a cycle of modules on increasingly sophisticated GIS operations. Everyone used common data sets from TEA’s current work in Texas and had an a-la-carte data menu to choose from as they went deeper. Each individual was asked to explore one of four questions:

  1. What is the impact of teacher tenure on student and school performance?
  2. Does a representative race/ethnic teaching population relate to student performance?
  3. What is the nature of the relationship between educator prep programs and the schools/districts they serve?
  4. Which rural districts are well-positioned to launch a grow-your-own teacher program?

We closed the day by migrating everyone’s maps out of ArcGIS Pro and into ArcGIS Online.

AIR advanced group at the training

The advanced group digging into modules on grouping analysis, point density, similarity, regressions and more.

The last day kicked off with presentations on building web apps and story maps. Each person then spent the afternoon creating an app that told the story of insights they discovered from their previous day of mapping. We wrapped up the training with a gallery walk of the team’s amazing creations with colleagues from TEA and AIR.


Interested in starting a training?

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GIS for Community Engagement with the World Bank

With over 2,000 projects benefiting 3.5 million people, the Azerbaijan Rural Invest Project (AzRIP) launched by the World Bank has been extremely successful in advancing the lives of everyday people by improving infrastructure in rural areas. Since its launch in 2005, the World Bank has assisted in a variety of projects including improving road conditions, health clinics and schools, and access to clean water. With so many projects across the 56 Rayons of Azerbaijan, Blue Raster was eager to help them create a map that had two goals: provide the Azerbaijani citizens a window into AzRIP's activities within the community and help investment teams make more focused, data-driven decisions.

A Commitment to Success

The World Bank has a commitment to success: each project works towards eradicating extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. The development of this web application is crucial to increase the community engagement of those benefiting from the investments, and we need to know what works when it comes to impacting everyday lives.

The application allows users to easily search by the type of investment project, with symbology that immediately translates the spread of certain types of investment projects and how these exist within communities and across borders. Also important was the ability to search by Rayon, year, and number of beneficiaries, to help understand the progression of these projects over time.

The Right Product

Because the projects are continuously evolving, Blue Raster worked with the World Bank to find a GIS solution providing organizational access to and ongoing management of the map. The Map is built utilizing ArcGIS Online, a complete, cloud-based mapping program that delivers these institutional requirements.  ArcGIS API for JavaScript provides the web framework for robust data visualization and data editing.

Throughout the development and launch of the application, Blue Raster assisted with international launch events attended by top government officials and stakeholders.  We love to meet the people who can use the application in their everyday lives and show them the power of mapping.


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