Agricultural Data Management

Course Description: This course covers the principles of collecting, managing, and retrieving financial, physical, and spatial data from farm operations to support the farm’s decision-making and reporting processes. Emphasis is placed on the use of financial, statistical, and logical spreadsheet function, GIS systems, record-keeping for fertilizer and pesticide usage and regulation, and specialized software applications, including integration of information from various sources and packages.

Course Information:

• View Current Syllabus
• View the Course Schedule

Course Notes:

• Course Introduction - A discussion and presentation of the course guidelines, syllabus and schedule.
• Information Technology - An introduction to Information Technology terms and concepts.
• Internet and the World Wide Web - What is the Internet and the WWW? Are they synonymous? We will discuss during this lecture.
• Wireless and Mobile Communication - Wireless technology and the mobile space are hot topics. In this lecture we discuss how they work.
• Google Services - Google is not simply a search tool. There are so many more useful services of benefit to students.
• Word-Processing - During this lecture we will discuss word-processing concepts and software.
• Word-Processing II - We continue our discussion of word-processing with a focus on tables, document types, and archival tools.
• Electronic Presentations - Electronic presentations (decks) are a keystone for information sharing to a large group.
• Spreadsheets - This session covers spreadsheet terminology and creation of a basic spreadsheet.
• Spreadsheets II - We build on our knowledge of spreadsheets and learn how to create charts/graphs and a database.
• Global Positioning Systems (GPS) - GPS technology is integral to precision agriculture and we take a look at how it works.
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - We learn to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data.
• Geometric Modeling - Using GIS systems to view the world is beneficial, but what if you could add buildings to the maps? In this session we learn how to use geometric modeling as a visualization and space planning tool.
• Final Project Presentation - The specifications for the course final project are located on this page.