Lesson Plan for Week 3

Objectives

We are back in the classroom together and will be expanding on what you worked on last week. Broadly there are two main topics: (1) Tools of open and reproducible workflows which will set the basis for our practical work in the coming weeks and (2) the relationship between environmental issues and questions, which is a basis for defining topics for the semester project.

This means we will:

  • General:
    • clarify questions from the previous week
  • Reproducible workflows and tools:
    • develop initial workflows for reproducible work
    • practice some of the tools, namely: Git/GitHub and Jupyter Notebooks
    • discuss and practice how to organize our work
  • Environmental Issues/ Data
    • discussing environmental issues and their relationship to data
    • clarify what is needed to analyze and communicate environmental issues

Specific learning goals

  • Understand the relationship between reproducible workflows and the tools that we use
  • Apply Git/GitHub as a tool for reproducibility (specific workflow)
  • Apply Git/GitHub as a tool for collaboration and sharing code/ files
  • Understand the necessity for creating a system of file organization
  • Create and manipulate files (Jupyter Notebook)
  • Formulate specific questions that can be answered with data
  • Differentiate between different types of environmental datasets

Materials

Class Preparation

We will get started with developing some workflows for working with data. These will involve Git/GitHub and Jupyter Notebooks. This means that you should:

  • Have the tools installed (see Assignments from last week)
  • Have your GitHub Account connected to GitHub-Desktop
  • Be able to open a jupyter notebook
  • Bring your laptop
  • Please also make sure to bring any notes from the previous week as a basis for discussion

Readings

Background

Have a look at these two readings, which provide a good introduction on why we need to keep ourselves organized for conducting reproducible workflows and how to do this in practice.

Tools

We will get started using Jupyter Notebooks and Git. Please review the following materials.

  • University of Colorado - Boulder EarthLab: Introduction to Earth Data Science Textbook (Version: 2025)
    • Chapter 3: Jupyter for Python, Lessons 1 and 3.
      • Note that Lesson 2 describes how Jupyter notebooks can be started from the Terminal. In your case, you can access the notebook through Anaconda Navigator (or the Terminal if you prefer)
      • The main goal for this is to get the basic gist of why jupyter notebooks are and how they can be used for coding. You should be able understand the basic cell structure of the notebook and how cells can be used for either code or markdown.
    • Chapter 7: Git and GitHub, Lessons 1
      • The main goal for this reading is to have a basic understanding on what Version Control is and can do.

We will do in-class activities that relate to both Jupyter Notebooks and GitHub.

Planned Agenda

Monday:

  • Questions from previous week
  • Mini Lecture: Reproducible workflows and version control
  • Activities:
    • Git for Version Control: Creating a repository on Github and making updates
    • Git for collaboration: Forking and cloning a repository
    • Creating course repositories for work

Wednesday

  • Revisit class expectations
  • Mini-lecture: Environmental issues and data
  • Activities:
    • Defining environmental questions that can be solved with data
    • Describing types of environmental data

Assignments

  • The first formal learning note will be due at the end of the week
  • There will be several in-class activities (to be added soon)