Module 5: Geocoding

     This was probably my least stressful lab of all so far, which makes it my favorite so far. This week, we were introduced to XY Coordinates and Geocoding. We had to work with excel or google sheets to clean up a table we would later use to geocode our map, I was happy to work with data tables and swiftly clean up address data for the Geocoding project due to my MS Excel and Google Sheets expertise. I chose to use Google Sheets because I was working off a laptop that was not my own and I think Google Drive is an easier to keep up with files that downloading and emailing etc. I work with excel and sheets on a daily basis so it didn't take me long to complete this. I have a long way to go before I attain the same type of confidence in my skills with ArcGIS. The struggle is real. Hopefully with much more practice it will all become much easier. 

In terms of this week’s lab, I struggled with using the Geoprocessing tools because no matter which one I ran it would take quite a while to load, I am not sure if that was my WIFI connect or what. It got me so frustrated that when filling on the Address Locator form I skipped some asterisk to mark so the locator tool would not run know matter what. I searched for about an hour to figure out what I was doing wrong until and reread the directions for the tenth time and finally understood what was the problem. 

In terms of the map imagery, I think I would've preferred to leave off the grey edges. It doesn't really serve a huge purpose for the map and it gets a little cluttered toward the coast. Other than that I think this was a pretty basic map to complete to show the locations of Manatee County Schools.