Getting started with

ArcGIS Online

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Updated 23/01/17

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Getting to know ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Online is a massive cloud based mapping and analysis platform that allows you to explore and
better understand the world from local to global scales. It incorporates, maps, apps, Storymaps,
analysis and much more to create a learning tool that can be used from primary through to
university. This tutorial will take you through the basics of using ArcGIS Online so that you can apply
it to your own education context. ArcGIS Online is a platform for creating and sharing ideas with the
world. A vast array of people and organisations are already doing this from The National Trust to
NASA, and everyone in-between. Join the fun and enjoy!

Maps in 2D
1. To get started open a browser (preferably Chrome, Firefox, Edge or IE11) and go to
http://www.arcgis.com/features/
a. You should now be on the website shown below

2. You can start using ArcGIS Online straight away without logging in (we will get to that later in the
tutorial).

The main areas that are of interest in this tutorial are shown ringed in green above:
a. Map – takes you to the main 2D map viewer
b. Scene – opens up the 3D globe
c. Help – takes you to a large collection of help documents, videos and other tutorials

To get started, click on Map to open the 2D map viewer

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3. Spend a little time exploring the map (i.e. go and find your house!). Zoom in and out of the map
using the mouse wheel or the plus and minus icons in the top left to get used to the controls:

a. Hold the left mouse button down to drag the map around
b. Zoom out to see the full extent of the map
c. Zoom in and find your house

4. Try out the different base maps. How could you use them in your lessons?

ArcGIS Online has a large array of

global and Great Britain focused
mapping that you can use in your
teaching. This includes Ordnance
Survey maps, Imagery, National
Geographic maps and much more.

Just click on the Basemap to see it in

the map viewer.

N.B. the grey and dark grey base

maps are useful for showing off
your data in a simple uncluttered
way.

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5. ArcGIS Online has many useful tools. The first one we will use is the measure tool. This tool
allows you to measure length, area and to find your latitude and longitude on the map. Hover
over the icon to discover which tool does which type of measurement.

Top-tip for using the length and area tool – click on the starting point of the item you wish to
measure and click again on the next points along the item. When you want to stop measuring,
double click to finish.

Use the Measure tool to discover:

a. The distance from your house to
your school _______________________

b. The distance from your house to

New York______________________

c. Compare the width of the mouth of

the Ganges _______________(just south
of Bhola) with the mouth of the river
Thames __________________

d. Use the measure area tool to work

out the area of your village/town/city
_________________

e. What is the latitude and longitude of your school______________ ______________

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Adding layers to your Web Map
There are many ways to add different layers to your map. The first is to use the drawing tools in
ArcGIS Online. These tools allow you to draw, add text and link images and websites to your map.

In the following section we are going to use the drawing tools in ArcGIS Online to create a map
showing the locations of four different places around the world that you have either visited or would
like to visit. This could be great Year 6 or 7 starter with ArcGIS Online.

To add the layer you need to expose the Add button. To do this click on the Modify Map button in
the top right of the screen. This button hides additional functionality to keep the interface as simple
as possible.

1. In this first example we will add a simple drawing layer called a Map Note. Click on the Add
Button on the left hand side and choose Add Map Notes:
Edit the name to
create a sensible
name. Also note
that there are
many templates
available using
the drop down
arrow. Click on
Create.

You have now created a new layer within the contents, think of this layer as a piece of tracing paper
that wraps around the world. You can now draw on this, add text and link images and web pages to
specific locations around the world.

Questions to think about before adding a point:

How will you find your places on the map? Pan and Zoom? Search?

What images will help to showcase your locations?

What sentences are you going to write about your chosen places?

What websites could you link to for extra information?

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2. To add information to the map; find your first location and click on one of the point symbols
either the Stock Pin, Pushpin or Cross. Then click on the map where you wish to add your point.
In this example I have chosen Ben Nevis as one of my locations.

3. In the pop up window shown above we can add information about the location. The pupils
needs to think of a title, some appropriate sentences to explain about the location and they can
also link to an image and a website about the place. The image and web site linking is explained
below:

In the Image URL box paste the web link to a picture of the place. For example:

http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/munros/ben-nevis-1.JPG the URL must finish with a .jpg, .png or

some other image format.

In the Image Link URL box paste a link to a web site about the place. Like this:

http://ben-nevis.com/

Top-tip – make sure that you either delete or overwrite the http:// in the text boxes when you
paste the links in!

When finished, your pop up window should look similar to this, but related to your location:

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You can also change the map icon by clicking on the Change Symbol button and choosing from one
of the many icons available. Once you have done all of this, click off the Edit button (top left) and
then click on the map icon to see all of this information appear in the newly configured pop up, like
this:

Repeat this process for the rest of your places.

4. It is worth noting that we have not logged in or installed anything to get this far. However, if you
want to save your map and share it with other people you do need to log into an account. To do
this you can easily create a free Public account for ArcGIS Online or use your organisations
subscription account to save all of your work. You can create a free account here
https://www.arcgis.com/home/createaccount.html or contact your IT team to get access to your
organisations Subscription account.
When you have your login details click
on Sign in in the top right of the screen.

N.B. the Free Public account is a single

user account that has less functionality
than an organisations Subscription
account. The Subscription account has
GIS analysis tools, mobile mapping and
the ability to manage student/pupil
accounts amongst the differences with the
free account.

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5. When you login you will automatically be asked to save your map, choose Yes, Save Map:

In the next window fill out

the details and click on Save
Map

N.B. Tags help you

search and find
your content

In ArcGIS Online, when you save a map

you create a Web Map. However, a Web
Map is not just a map on the web! Think of
a Web Map as being similar to a Word
document, but for maps. A Word document
contains text, images, font, font size, colour etc. A Web Map contains similar things but for your
maps. All of the different layers that you have added, your Bookmarks, location, transparency, pop
up settings, filters and anything else that you have specified when you were creating your map.

By using the Save button you have just created your first Web Map.

Now let’s try 3D!

You can explore the 3D scene without logging into an account, however to be able to do some of the
sections below, including adding layers and slides you will need to have signed into an account.

1. In ArcGIS Online, 3D is often referred to as a Scene. So, to get started go to:

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2. This will take you to the 3D globe viewer:

3. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the globe, and hold down the right click to
rotate. Or use these buttons to Pan and Rotate for a 3D perspective
Experiment with the controls to get used to them. N.B>. Rotate works better closer to the
ground.

Pan

Rotate

4. Unlike most other digital globes, you can easily change the type of map shown on the globe in
ArcGIS Online. You can change to imagery, National Geographic, Oceans amongst others. To do
this click on the base map selector icon shown below and choose your base map:

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Explore some of your favourite places. Below is Helvellyn in the Lake District showing some excellent
glacial features.

5. The 3D Scene viewer in ArcGIS Online can be used like a simple 3D PowerPoint as you can save
Slides of different locations around the world. To do this click on the Slides button and then use
the Capture Slide button to start capturing and naming different locations around the world.
This could be set as homework or you could create a slide series showing different locations that
related to a particular lesson.

When you have finished creating Slides click on Done.

6. To save all of this work click on the Save Scene button and fill out the details in the new window:

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The Slides and the all of the 3D information are now saved as a Web Scene for you to use later. A
Web Scene is the same as a Web Map that we saved earlier, but for 3D.

To access the Slides just click on the thumbnail images at the bottom of the screen.

Back to 2D - Adding data and Smart Mapping

Question - How many earthquakes were there last week with a
magnitude of greater than one, and where did they occur?
You can use ArcGIS Online to answer this question through inquiry based learning and allow your
pupils to handle large volumes of real data along the way.

ArcGIS Online allows you to add your own or other data (primary and secondary data) to a map
really easily. This could be a large file of earthquake data as in the following example or a small
spreadsheet of micro climate data collected by your students. The principles are exactly the same,
regardless of what the data is about. So…

1. Go back to the 2D mapping, if you are still in your 3D Scene then click
Home then Map, or if you are in your My Contents page, click Map
from the top bar. If this is not a new map then

If this is not a new map, click on New Map in the top right of the
screen and then Create new map.

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2. To answer the question above we need find a reliable source of earthquake data that we can
easily access. Many organisations provide data in a format that ArcGIS Online can use, in this
case it is the United States Geological Survey (USGS). They collect seismic data from around the
globe and make it openly available. The link to their website to get the data is a little long if you
have this document in print, so here is the short version followed by the full address:

Short URL http://on.doi.gov/1Jpg5og

Full URL http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/csv.php

Use one of these links to go to the web site.

In this example we are interested in the earthquakes from the Past Seven Days and with a
Magnitude Greater than 1.

Click on the M1.0+ Earthquakes link circled above on the right hand side.

The data will either be downloaded to the bottom of your screen or will open up in Excel,
depending on your browser settings. It is important to know where the file has been saved to
your PC. In most cases it will be saved in the Downloads folder.

Have a look at the data in Excel and you will see that it is complicated and noisy, not usually a lot
of fun for pupils or teachers (there will be about 1000 earthquakes). However, ArcGIS Online can
make sense of this data very quickly as it has Longitude and Latitude in the table. To add the
data to the map, locate the downloaded file in windows explorer; arrange your screen to look
like this and follow the instruction:

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Drag and drop the file onto the map

Drag and drop the data onto the map and watch how the data is automatically added to the map
as ArcGIS Online knows how to map spatial information.

ArcGIS Online uses a sophisticated cartographic engine called Smart Mapping to make choosing the
right colours and symbols for your data easy. The Smart Mapping capability in ArcGIS Online has
chosen to show the data using MagError as shown in section 1 above with different sized circles.
Change the data which is being symbolised using the drop down arrow to explore the different data
attributes available.

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Zoom into the map a little and try the Heat map option available to see the distribution of the
data.

Go back to the Counts and Amounts mapping option with Depth chosen from the drop down menu
in Section 1 as shown above.

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We can even dig deeper into the data and explore what earthquakes cause the most damage and
loss of human life. Shallow, large magnitude earthquakes are usually the biggest killers as most of
the energy is released close to the surface where people live. We can find this combination in the
data by mapping Depth and Magnitude on the same point using proportional symbols and a colour
gradient. Click on the Add Attribute link in section 1 and choose Mag as shown below:

At the moment the shallow earthquakes are shown as a white-ish colour that does not highlight
their importance in a strong enough way.

To improve this, click on Options in the Colour & Size section and then Options again as shown
below:

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ArcGIS Online has a range of different options of changing the style
of your maps but in this case we will just change the colour. Click
on Symbols, Fill and scroll down and choose the red colour ramp
and click on the Invert Colour Ramp button.

Click OK and Done until you get back to you map like this:

The large red circles now locate the shallow depth and high magnitude earthquakes. Click OK and
Done to keep the changes you have made.

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Top Tip – all of the controls for the layer will be shown if you mouse over the layer Change Style

Show key

Analysis
Show table Other tools
including Rename

3. You can use these same techniques with local data your pupils may have collected on a field trip
or work around the school. If we take a microclimates example around your school you can use
the Location function in the Measure tool to collect the latitude and longitude. Just copy and
paste the locations into a table like this one, save it as a CSV file in Excel and then just drag and
drop it onto the map. All of the same mapping options will be available to you!

Latitude Longitude Location Wind speed Temperature C Light as

name m/s Lumens
51.260168 1.083104 Playing field 15 16 30,000
51.260756 1.084756 In the Quad 3 19 20,000
51.260941 1.083957 Behind science 9 17 16,000
block
51.260890 1.085319 Staff car park 12 20 25,000

4. If we come back to the question we asked at the start of this section:

How many earthquakes were there last week with a magnitude

greater than one, and where did they occur?
I think that we have comprehensively answered that using real data from a world leading
organisation, who also happen to use ArcGIS Online for their mapping. The pupils are using real
data and real tools to address real issues.

We can also take this investigation even further with ArcGIS Online as it contains millions of
maps that could be of interest to us. At the beginning of the lesson we could have set a slightly
different investigation question, such as:

Is there a relationship between plate boundaries and

earthquakes?
We have already mapped the earthquakes using data that was just 5 minutes old from the USGS.
The item that is missing for this investigation is a plate boundaries map. However, we can search
in ArcGIS Online to try and find one. So, to start searching for layers in ArcGIS Online click on Add
and then Search for Layers.
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In the Find box type Tectonics, then
insure you are searching in ArcGIS Online
using the drop down arrow, rather than
your organisation.

You will see that a variety of people and

organisations have added plate boundary
maps. In this example let’s choose the
top search Item from Esri Canada.

Click on Add to overlay the plate

boundaries on the earthquakes map.

Then Done Adding layers at the bottom.

You can now see the plate boundaries and their association with earthquakes from the last 7 days:

You could also change the base map to the Oceans base map to drain away all of the water to reveal
the sea floor topography and the effects of plate tectonic activity i.e. sea floor spreading, trenches,
Hot spotting (Hawaii).
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Click Save and add a title and tags to your map, so we can add another element to this investigation.

Creating a Web App – the elevation profile tool

ArcGIS Online is an extensive platform that also allows you to create and publish your own
specialised Web Apps.

In this example we are going to use the Elevation Profile Web App template to create a tool that will
allow us to see a cross section through a subduction zone or an elevation profile of any other part of
the world that we choose to look at.

As you have saved your map the Share button becomes comes available. Sharing your content is a
very important part of the ArcGIS Online platform. In the free version you can choose to keep the
content private or share with the world. There is also social sharing via Twitter, Facebook etc.

Click on the Share button to see this window:

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Click on Everyone to see
all of the options
become available.

These are Groups that

have been created in
your account to help
you organise your work.
You can create as many
Groups as you need. If
you tick on one of the
boxes the map will be
shared to that Group.

Before we go on to create the Elevation Profile Web App it would be useful to click on the Embed in
Website button to explore this capability.

ArcGIS Online automatically creates the website code (iframe) to make it easy to embed your maps
in to the school website, blogs or any other web pages you may use. Just choose what functionality
you want the map to have from the tick boxes and then just copy the code and either send it to the
person who looks after your web site or just paste it in yourself for an instant interactive map. Easy!

Why not have a ‘Map of the Month’ competition and put the winning map up on the school site for
the pupils and parents to see, not to mention Ofsted!

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OK, let’s get back to the Elevation Profile tool. Click on Back.

Then click Create a Web App

There are a wide range of Web App templates for you to choose from depending on what you want
to do. Take some time to explore some of the other templates, especially the Social Media and
Storymaps as these are particularly powerful.

In this example we just want to work with Elevation Profile template. Click on it.

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Click on Create App

N.B. If you have an

understanding of
coding you can
download any of
the templates and
customise them.
They are all Open
Source and also
available on
GitHub.

These could also

form the basis a
Computer Science
lesson.

Give the app an appropriate name and click on Done

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The Web App is highly customisable so you can create your own personalised app. As always with
ArcGIS Online you can dive deep or shallow, depending on what you want to do:

 In the General tab you can add a title (e.g. 2017 Earthquake Profile App) description and a
splash screen for when the app starts up.
 In the Theme tab you can also configure the layout, colours and add custom css if you wish.
 The Option tab allows you to add a legend, dialog and a basemap gallery.
 In the Elevation Profile section change the units from miles to kilometres.

Click on Save and then Launch which will open the app in a new page.

The app is easy to use. The pencil icon is used to draw a line across the area that you want to see an
elevation profile for.

The graph symbol next to the pencil just toggles to profile tool on and off.

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To see a cross section through a subduction zone pan and zoom into Japan and draw a line as shown
below:

The Pacific Plate being subducted under

the Philippine Plate, creating a deep
trench at the point of the collision.

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Where is all of my content saved?
All of the maps and content you create in ArcGIS Online is saved in the Esri cloud and nothing is
saved locally on your PC or network. To see your content go back to the confirmation page of your
app and click Close, this will take you to the item description for the app you have just created. Click
My Content to go back to the main content management part of ArcGIS Online.

You can see some folders that have already been created for this example to organise your work and
you can see the three items that you created. You can also create Groups and explore the Groups
that have been created for you by simply clicking on Groups.

All of your work is saved here so that you can access it anytime anywhere.
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Getting support for ArcGIS Online
There are a range of ways to get support for using ArcGIS Online. These include our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/GISforSchools/

Our Twitter page:

https://twitter.com/GIS4Schools

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The ArcGIS Online Help pages:

http://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/

A collection of resources in a Storymap:

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http://esriukeducation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=0f9b161d6d5041e6b50
30e89e8cc017b

Or simply email us at [email protected]

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