Goals Today

• Getting conversation and communication going in class, especially in context of bCourses
• Continue to get us set up for programming in IPython notebook
• Orienting ourselves to PfDA, especially the Appendix
• Start in on studying US Census Data

Import Administrivia: Enrollment and Wait Lists

Official enrollment limit is 49. I am allowed to have up to 54 students at the upper limit. (As of this morning, there is a total of 59 students.) So if you are enrolled but don't plan to stay, please drop the class so it'll be easier to make way for wait list students. I will be prioritizing I School students on the wait list -- as well as people are working actively in the course.

Topic: Enrollment and Wait Lists

One Place to Start in Finding Materials in the Course

http://is.gd/wwod14 (especially the README.md)

Please Talk to Me and to Each Other

We're are a large group of people. I encourage you to come talk to me and AJ -- to introduce yourselves to me. I'm going to work hard to get to know each of you. I'd love if you can make sure I know who you are. Don't be shy.

You can me Raymond if you'd like. Let me know if there is a particular way you want to be addressed.

We're Using bCourses

The campus has rolled out a new learning management system (Instructure's Canvas. Our course is at bCourses: WwOD14.

I want to spend some time to get ourselves oriented in bCourses because good, clear communication is important to our work in this course.

Important Features in bCourses

• Make sure you have Notification Preferences set properly so that you get notified about the activity on bCourses.
• I will be using Announcements extensively.
• At Assignments, you'll find assigments that you need to do on bCourses.
• I hope Discussions will serve many purposes: for dealing with Q&A--more on the next slide; for more informal communication among participants, such as Introduce Yourself If You'd Like,
• We'll definitely make use of the Gradebook. My goal is to make it clear as quickly as possible where you stand in terms of grades at any time in the course. It will ease anxiety for all of us. (I don't want us to get obsessed by grades in this course...but it's an important device to structure our learning.)
• I think that we'll be able to make good use of Quizzes: to survey the class, to get structured feedback, to assess our state of understanding the material, and to evaluate performance.
  
• Let's experiment with Chat.

Getting Questions Answered

One of the best way to learn is to ask questions and answer questions. I hope we can use bCourses Discussions to be a central place for this to happen. If you have a question that needs private attention, by all means, talk to me directly. But being able to record and discuss questions openly is a great way to share knowledge and enable all of us to help each other.

For example: Any questions so far as we start Day 2?

In Class Activity

Electronic communication will be important -- but we should also make the best use of the time we have together.

First, let's take some time to reflect on what you personally hope to learn. Write some thoughts to yourself. Then post at least once on the Discussion: What you hope to learn and accomplish in the course? (Due Friday 2014.01.24 11:59pm PST]. (Let's take about 5 minutes to think and wrestle with find the right place in bCourses).

Then, get into small groups and discuss: Small group discussion on what you want to learn.

Openly shared class notes

Let's try group note-taking during classes -- it's helpful for me and you to have a place to capture ideas, questions, action items:

http://bit.ly/wwod14classnotes

Continue work on our notebooks

In working-open-data-2014/notebooks:

• Day_01_A_World_Population.ipynb

• Day_02_A_US_Census_API.ipynb

At this moment, I'm not asking you to upload any notebooks....these are warm-up notebooks to help get you set up to tackle a problem set next week. But I will assume that you will have figured out how to make these notebooks run and that you do know how to do the exercises. So look for help if you need it!

nbviewer bookmarklet

Open in nbviewer by jiffyclub

Assignments / Homework

We'll start or even finish the following small assignments in class today:

• Survey about Technical Background: Working with Open Data (Due Friday 2014.01.24 11:59pm PST]

• Post at least once on the Discussion: What you hope to learn and accomplish in the course? (Due Friday 2014.01.24 11:59pm PST]

Notebooks:

• Day_01_A_World_Population.ipynb

• Day_02_A_US_Census_API.ipynb

This poll might help me to schedule office hours:

http://doodle.com/38txkgm48qyr8z7w