Updating spatial intro

[gvwilson]

Work in progress:

1. Objectives need updated.
2. Key points need to be written.
3. A FIXME about explaining the creation of the map's XY points.
4. What should this be called/how should it fit into the larger scheme of things?

@synapticarbors: can you please take a look?

[gvwilson]

@synapticarbors will you have a chance to update this in the next week?

[synapticarbors]

@gvwilson - I'll try to sit down and take a look at this later in the week or early next week.

[sgillies]

@gvwilson I'm joining in response to this Twitter post: https://twitter.com/gvwilson/status/491719988521472000. #3 above isn't a question, do you mean #4? I'd call this exercise "making a map". It seems good to me. Cartopy may supplant Basemap some day, but I don't think it's better for novices.

Another useful exercise for novices would be showing how to export points from that CSV to GeoJSON and upload them to GitHub (like https://gist.github.com/sgillies/11010519) for sharing.

[barryrowlingson]

I put together a basic python-spatial tutorial for R/stats people for a summer school recently. Geo stuff starts here: http://barryrowlingson.github.io/geostat/geopython.html#(19) introduces geopy, fiona, shapely, folium, mplleaflet, geopandas, pysal - worth massaging into bc form?

[gvwilson]

GIS in Python is definitely useful, but this PR has languished - I propose closing it in the run-up to #759.

[synapticarbors]

The languishing is my fault. Between teaching at UDel and a bunch of other stuff, I just have/had too much on my plate. I've also been hesitant all along with this lesson, since GIS isn't my thing and I don't have a good sense of how to make it most useful for the people it would be targeting. I'm happy to revisit this at some later date though.

[gvwilson]

OK, let's close this one for now and revisit after the bc repo has been broken up - thanks.