Student Initial Setup

1. We will use Slack for most communication and discussion. Please join the course workspace with your UW email address. See Canvas announcement for invitation link.

   • If you are unfamiliar with Slack, see intro material here: https://slack.com/help/articles/218080037-Getting-started-for-new-members

   • I recommend that you use the standalone desktop/mobile app rather than the web interface

   • Please try to use threads whenever possible: (https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-organize-discussions-)

2. Create a free Github account if you do not have one already: https://github.com/join

   • I will distribute materials/assignments using Github Classroom, which requires you to link a Github account.

   • I recommend you apply for the free edu account upgrade (https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new), which will allow you to create unlimited number of private repos with unlimited collaborators.

   • You will need to join the UW-GDA Github Organization (https://github.com/UW-GDA). See the instructions below to accept the “Github Starter Course” assignment, which should automatically add you to the Organization.

   • If all of this is new, don’t worry, we will walk through basic workflows during the first lecture/lab, and you will become more familiar in the coming weeks.

3. Accept the “Github Starter Course” assignment (see Slack for link)

   • This will create a new repo with your username appended (github-starter-course-username)

   • If prompted to find your name on the course roster, you can skip - in past years, I manually added everyone, but we will use this starter course assignment to get you set up, and your github username will be your primary identifier, not your full name.

   • If presented with opportunity to join the UW-GDA organization, please do so. Otherwise, I will manually send you an invite (sent to the email address associated with your github account).

     • If you encounter any issues or you were unable to join the UW-GDA organization before the first class, send Eric a direct message on Slack

   • Give the README.md in your new repo a skim - it provides a nice, high-level overview of git/Github

4. If you have not already done so, please sign up for an institutional Google account using your UW email address. This is needed to fill out Forms and View/Edit Docs. I will only enable access for UW Google accounts (not personal accounts).

5. Attempt to log on to the course Jupyterhub (see Slack for link)

   • This is the computing environment we will use for the quarter

   • We will review this interface during lab, but feel free to start exploring

   • If you have trouble logging in, send a message to the #it_help channel on Slack

   • To bring up a terminal to use for the shell and git exercises:

     • Click the “+” icon in the upper left corner of the Jupyterlab interface to bring up the Launcher

     • Under “Other” click on the Terminal icon.

     • This will launch a new tab with default bash shell

     • More details: https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user/terminal.html

6. Optional: Install/upgrade QGIS on your computer

   • QGIS Notes