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| Image 1. Dr.Adam Dennett introduced the course outline on 2nd October, 2013 |
From this
academic term, Networking City is doing a teaching assistant role for ‘GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND SCIENCE’ course which is set up by CASA for their
provocative master programme ‘MResAdvanced Spatial Analysis & Visualisation’ and Bartlett students. In this year, the course is
opened to Urban Planning and DPU students of Bartlett, so thirty students registered,
while fifteen students who were mostly from the CASA had an opportunity last
year.
Dr. Adam Dennett,
the lecturer, briefly showed the outline of the course and explained the
meaning of studying spatial analysis, definition of Geographic Information System,
linkage between GIS and scientific research, the difference between GISystems
and GIScience, and short history of GIS.
During one hour his
lecture, the most impressive part was what the meaning of information is in
Geography and Urban studies, and how it can make an impact on decision making
process. When he illustrated the structure of how one spatial data could be
developed to information, knowledge and wisdom, and could be the initial point
which change our environments, he emphasised not to make a graphic image by GIS
programmes but to consider the meaning behind the data.
After the
lecture, the students had two-hour practical session. They operated the main
programmes of the course: Arc-GIS, QGIS and R on UCL computers, and checked how
they can set up the programmes on their own laptops. In order to learn basic knowledge
and functions of Arc-GIS, Adam recommended registering My Virtual CampusTraining on ESRI homepage and complete its modules.
