OUR WORLD IN 3D (archive of the winter 2008 classroom-based course)

The intention of this course is to have fun while learning some powerful 3D Geospatial skills that you immediately will be able to apply to your work. We'll spend most of our time learning about Keyhole Markup Language (KML), the data format used by Google Earth. During the latter half of the course, we'll dive into Google SketchUp, a relatively simple 3D modeling system. With the exception of a brief demonstration of how to convert GIS data to KML format data, all aspects of this course will use free software or online services that you can run on either a Mac or a PC. A Google Account will be a requirement of this course; participants will be instructed on how to create one at the first course meeting.

All course materials are available at:
http://biology.wsc.ma.edu/3DWorld

Systems used will include the following (in order of appearance):

• Google Earth 4.2
• Google Maps (web-based; no client software required)
• a text editor program (on a pc, WordPad is ok; TextPad is great, too)
• a zip file extraction program (built in feature in WinXP & Mac OS X)
• Google Picasa Web Albums (web-based; no client sofware required)
• Google Documents & Spreadsheets (web-based; no client sofware required)
• Photo Editing program of your choice (if you need a free one, try IrfanView)
• Google SketchUp 6