Davis's Work Report - spatial-data-discovery/sdd-2021 GitHub Wiki

2021-09-06 | First Full Week of Classes

Summary

  • plain text demo
  • intro to markdown
  • os environs, repo cloning, and the git workflow

Overview

  1. Demo

    In this demo, we take a look at some classic file formats and see what they look like from the perspective of a plain text editor and start the discussion on what "sustainable authorship" means. This prompts this week's discussion topic and ties into the readings.

  2. MD

    Markdown (MD) is written in plain text, just like computer code. Also like computer code, MD has semantics and syntax. I review simple guidelines on how to style your plain text documents using MD. Similar still to computer code, MD has an interpreter (called the renderer), which takes what you write in MD and converts it to a stylistically pleasing format (typically HTML, where we get most of our information, but could also be PDF, Word processor, etc.). We take a look at StackEdit, an in-browser MD editor and renderer.

  3. Environments

    While optional, creating environment variables on your computer speeds up accessing specific files and folders. See our course website's Methods Resource for more info.

  4. Git

    We talked about what is Git (see also supplemental readings on the course calendar) and briefly walked through the workflow (see also here:

    • Clone
    • Config
    • Pull
    • Edit / create
    • Stage
    • Commit
    • Push

Figure by Lbhtw licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Up Next

  • Review Git workflow.
  • Review GitHub discussion.
  • Review the work log (Wiki).
  • Assign "About the Coder" webpage (in MD).
  • Our first in-class discussion.

Question of the Week: What is spatial?

These weekly questions are supposed to tie into our discovery project. Now that we have one week in the books thinking about "what is spatial" (see Disc 1), what do you think about "spatial" data?

Go back to what you found interesting in Discussion 1. Is there anything you can find "spatial" about it?

2021-09-01 | First Day of Classes

Summary of Work

  • Over the "big picture" of the class
  • Review the syllabus and schedule
  • Review the GitHub repositories and the two webpages that students will create
  • Mention the Slack channel and Google Form
  • Begin registering students in our GitHub developers team

Overview of Tasks

  1. The big picture.

    Walk students through your ideas about the class and the 'how' and the 'why' it came to be. This includes going through examples of past Discovery Projects and student developer pages. I also take this time to discuss changes made to the class spurred by student feedback; I hope students take away that their feedback in the course evaluations make real impact on how this class evolves.

  2. Reviews.

    Despite always getting advice to not dive into the syllabus (boring!), I tend to spend time reviewing it. This semester, I also added a couple of questions to the first quiz that require looking at the syllabus just to keep it in everyone's minds.

    The GitHub repositories are probably a little overwhelming when first explored, so I wanted to get that experience in first week. This way, it may not look at confusing (or it may make more sense down the road).

  3. Slacked.

    Last semester, I gave the option of GroupMe and Slack, but it was difficult and confusing to keep track of two different messaging services. To simplify life, it's just Slack, which is what other Data Science instructors also tend to use. We'll see how it goes.

  4. Welcome to the team!

    Now's the time to get everyone added to our F21 - Developers team on GitHub. Once you're in, you have write access to our two repositories and you can join the discussions.

Up Next

  1. Next week, we make sure everyone is on GitHub and we take a look at the first Sandbox Challenge (update to schedule). This includes cloning repositories to your local computer and/or editing files on the repository.
  2. We will also take a look at the plain text file and why it contributes to sustainable authorship.
  3. If time allows, we'll do an exercise on markdown editing and rendering.

Question of the Week: Getting Started.

Not so much a question, but a state of being. A new semester in a new classroom. I'm excited about ISC 1111, which has a dynamic table layout that might actually be better for discussions that our old home in Small Hall. I am also excited to see us roll over 1000 commits to our organization website.