Friday, January 20, 2006

ESRI Training Opportunities

Of course ArcGIS is far from free, but I really appreciate all of the training opportunities that are being made available. There are great ways that students (or any other ESRI user) can learn or increase their GIS skills.

So...No more excuses!! If you have access to ArcGIS and a desire to learn to use it, here are your free options:
This burst of aggression is actually my way of yelling at myself ;)
  • Live Training Seminars
    • These are entirely free
    • I especially appreciate the extensive archives

  • Podcast Feeds
    • The new service from ESRI is great for audio learners and folks who work at their desks and are tired of music and have already listened to this week's dose of AVSP.
    • I hope these feeds are updated often.

  • ESRI Virtual Campus: Free Training
    • Many of these courses listed here have only a handful of free modules, but there are lots of free courses as well.

  • ArcGIS Documentation (books)
    • While these books are not freely available over the net to everyone, PDF versions are included with the ArcGIS 9 installation CDs.
    • I mention these books because they are extremely useful. These are the books that I used when I first learned GIS (self-taught), and they are fantastic. I like the way each book starts out with an overview exercise that leads you through many of the simple and complex uses of the software and then subsequent chapters explain the procedures in more detail. I am a big fan.

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