Homework #1: Orientation

Purpose: Set up your own GIS class home page, and register for ESRI Virtual Campus courses.

Part 1:

1. Make sure your account in CAEDM is active.  If you are not a CEEn student you can activate a CAEDM account by virtue of being in this class.  Go to room 423/425 and enable your accounts on the computer outside the office.  You can use another account, but you will definitely need access to ArcView and extensions as well as to the internet to download data and publish results.  By the way members of this class will have an increased disk quota on CAEDM (1.0 GB).  However, even with increased quotas you will want to be vigilant in keeping your area clean and moving unnecessary files, old assignments,.. etc. onto zip disks.  The extra disk space is to give you some working room for this class and will go away at the end of the semester.

2. Login to your account and familiarize yourself with your workspace  I suggest that you create a ce414 sub-directory in your www directory to store your class www assignments. (details later).

3. Create your own class home page.  You can use the helps found here.  You may also want to fix up your personal home page if you have already got one - if you don't have one, create a simple one.  If you create a file named "index.htm or index.html" and place it in your www directory then the URL for your homepage would be: http://www.et.byu.edu/~loginname.  Where loginname is your CAEDM account login.

4. Create a partial list of homework assignments. You must set up a list of the homeworks on your class home page - inside the ce414 directory. From this list you will make links to your answers for these homeworks. Make the links as the homeworks are done - what we want now is that list somewhere on your class page. The future homework answers will also be put in your ce414 directory that you just created.

5. Send an email to the TA with the URL of your class home page, your CAEDM account name (we need to add you to a shared disk space to access homework data) and also be sure to update your CE414 Account information when you receive the email.  If you don't receive this email within the next couple of days then send an email to the TA.

6. Finally read the LDS Conference talk entitled "Compass of the Lord" by Lowell M. Snow.  Email Dr. Nelson and tell him what this has to do with GIS and your studies this semester?  Not required, but I also recommend "Spiritual Preparedness: Start Early and Be Steady" by Henry B. Eyring.

Notes:

I don't expect your class page to be too fancy, but I expect it to look nice and that you include the following:

• At least two links to external pages (one can be a link to your home page).

• You should provide a link on your home page to your class page.

• At least two different types of headings or font changes.

• At least one image on your page (you will be saving pictures of your maps as images and putting them in html, so I want to be sure you know how to do this).

• A link to your email box.

• A partial list of homework assignments (for now they do not need to be linked to anything).

Part 2:

In this part, you'll register for ESRI Virtual Campus courses that you'll be using along the semester. Some of these classes are recommended and you are welcome to try them even after the class (for up to a year).

1. Go to ESRI Virtual Campus main web page.
2. Create a new "ESRI Global Account", if you don't have one already. Follow the instruction on the web site.
3. Go to "My Courses" page and using this list, register for the indicated classes using the respective codes. You can do this by clicking on the "Have a new Course Access Code" link.
4. Once you are done with all your classes, get a screen capture of "My Courses" page with the courses listed and paste it to your homework page. Send the URL of your web page to the TA.