The capability of hyperlinking mapped features to photographs, text, and video at locations where field data is collected has for at least a decade been one of the most appealing and useful features about GIS. In an educational context, this fosters community building, sense of place, field data integration, investigation of a problem, and much more. The traditional method I used for years to hyperlink was to transfer the images and videos from my camera via a cable, upload them to the web, and link to them. Recent technological advancements permit additional options that are simpler but are equally powerful.
Let’s say you want to eliminate the step of manually transferring the photographs and video from your camera to your computer. Why? Manual transfer takes time and requires cables, and both may be in short supply during a class you are teaching. While in the field, you can email photographs from your smart phone to yourself. Once in the lab, access your email account and transfer your photographs to a website. Hundreds of sites offer the capability of hosting photographs, such as PicasaWeb, Flickr, and WindowsLive. Once online, make sure that your photographs are “public” so your students can view them. Students can hyperlink to your photographs—or better yet, their own photographs, by using a variety of GIS tools, including ArcGIS Explorer Online or ArcGIS desktop.
In a recent class I co-taught, I used ArcGIS Explorer Online (http://explorer.arcgis.com). After accessing the site, I used the “search” tool to locate the latitude and longitude coordinate pair that I had marked with my GPS receiver at the top of the Bookcliffs. At this location, I added a point and changed its symbology to a mountain. I then used “edit contents” to add a name, description, link to my photograph, and a related website. For the related website, I found a perfectly-suited sequence stratigraphy of the Bookcliffs. Pay close attention to how your chosen website displays photographs. I could not directly link to the location of the photograph in my PicasaWeb album, but rather, to the full jpg link, which I found by right-clicking and accessing the photograph’s properties. In my case, this was here.
In ArcGIS Explorer Online, when I click on the point on my map, the photograph, description, and hyperlink appear. I saved the resulting map on ArcGIS Online and made it public here.
Could you more fully automate the process so that you can email your photographs directly to a website and link to that website? Absolutely! I will cover this in a separate blog column.
How might you be able to use these methods in your own instruction?
- Joseph Kerski, ESRI Education Manager
