Python Workshops for Beginners

Welcome to the Community Data Workshops (CDSW) — a series of four sessions designed to introduce some of the basic tools of programming and analysis of data from online communities to absolute beginners.

The CDSW were held between September 26th and November 15th in 2014 at the University of Washington, Seattle. This pages includes links to the curriculum we used so thats other can build on and learn from our curriculum.

Registration
Registration is currently closed and, sadly, we are oversubscribed! Even though we've found a much bigger room and doubled our capacity, we have still had to turn away many people. That said, we certainly hope to organize more workshops like these in the future. You can watch (or subscribe to) the Network Collective blog where we will post more information in the future.

Schedule
All sessions are interactive and involve you programming on your own and on your own laptop. Everybody attending should bring a laptop and a power cord so that they don't run out of battery.

Session 0 (Friday September 26th Evening 6-9pm)
Come to CMU 104 between 6:00 and 9:00pm. It's OK if you come late but you'll want to have as much time as you can to finish the setup and self-directed assignments so come as close to 6pm as you can.

During this session, mentors will help you:


 * set up your development environment
 * learn how to execute Python code from a file and interactively from a Python prompt
 * learn about printing and using Python as a calculator

We understand that there are some people who will attend the Saturday workshop but who cannot make it the Friday session. That's OK but it means that you'll be on your own and responsible to get everything set up before our first meeting on Saturday morning. We'll post all the information for the Friday session on this page and you will able to follow along.

>>Click here for the the setup and tutorial material.<<

Session 1 (Saturday September 27th)
Come to CMU 104 by 9:45am. You will need time to get settled and setup. We want to start lecturing promptly at 10am.


 * Morning, 10am-noon: A 2 hour lecture-based introduction to the Python programming language
 * Lunch, noon-1pm: We'll provide lunch
 * Afternoon, 1pm-3:30pm: Python practice through short projects on a variety of fun and practical topics
 * Wrap-up, 3:30pm-4pm: Wrap-up, next steps, and upcoming opportunities for learning and practicing Python

Session 2 (Saturday October 25th)
Come to CMU 104 by 9:45am. You will need time to get settled and setup. We want to start lecturing promptly at 10am.

Please come prepared to start working in your Python interpreter during the lesson. If you are going to be bringing a different computer than the one you brough and setup last time, you will need to go through the setup section of the setup and tutorial session from the first Friday session. You don't need to do the tutorial or CodeAcademy lessons again unless you think that you could use a refresher. You can also skip the sections about installing Colorwall and Wordplay. We won't be looking at those in this session.

To participate in the Twitter afternoon session, you must have registered with Twitter as a developer before the session by following the Twitter authentication setup instructions. If you did not do this, or if you tried but did not succeed, please attend one of the other two sessions instead.


 * Morning, 10am-noon: A 2 hour lecture-based introduction to the web APIs
 * Lunch, noon-1pm: We'll provide lunch!
 * Afternoon, 1pm-3:30pm: Python and API practice through short projects
 * Wrap-up, 3:30pm-4pm: Wrap-up, next steps, and upcoming opportunities for learning and practicing Python

Session 3 (Saturday November 15th)
Come to CMU 104 by 9:45am. You will need time to get settled and setup. We want to start lecturing promptly at 10am.

Please come prepared to start working in your Python interpreter during the lesson. If you are going to be bringing a different computer than the one you brough and setup last time, you will need to go through the setup section of the setup and tutorial session from the first Friday session. You don't need to do the tutorial or CodeAcademy lessons again unless you think that you could use a refresher. You can also skip the sections about installing Colorwall and Wordplay. We won't be looking at those in this session.

In the lecture, we're going to be doing building some simple visualizations online in Google Docs. Please make sure you have a Google Account you can use for the session and poke around at and create a new Google Spreadsheet. I suspect that most of you are going to use Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice, Gnumeric, etc., in your work after the class but using Google Docs means that we'll all be using the same software during the lecture.


 * Morning, 10am-noon: A 2 hour lecture-based introduction to data analysis
 * Lunch, noon-1pm: We'll provide lunch! And not pizza this time!
 * Afternoon, 1pm-3:30pm: Python and analysis practice through short projects
 * Wrap-up, 3:30pm-4pm: Wrap-up, next steps, and upcoming opportunities for learning and practicing Python

Resources

 * Friday September 26th setup and tutorial
 * Saturday September 27th lecture
 * Saturday September 27th projects
 * Introduction to Python CodeAcademy exercises


 * Saturday October 25th lecture
 * Saturday October 25th projects
 * Introduction to APIs in Python CodeAcademy exercises - Includes information on using APIs from NPR, Bitly, Sunlight Foundation, and PlaceKitten
 * Saturday November 15th lecture
 * Saturday November 15th projects

Location
The University of Washington Department of Communication is hosting the event. We are located in the Communications building (CMU) on the Seattle UW campus. The Friday setup and the morning lectures will both be held in CMU 104. We will move into other rooms in the building for the workshop parts of the sessions.

You can find the building on this Google map or on this campus map from UW.

Parking at UW is available but is not free. There is self-serve parking as well as gatehouses that are staffed from 7am on Saturday and can issue you parking passes and point you to an appropriate lot. More details are on the UW Commuter Services website for Visitors and Guests. UW is also well served by public transportation and easily accessible by bicycle with the Burke Giilman Trail.

If you have any questions about the event, you can contact [mailto:makohill@uw.edu makohill@uw.edu].

What to bring

 * 1) a laptop (ideally one with a Python environment set up. See Session 0 information, above)
 * 2) a power cord
 * 3) a sense of adventure!

Food
Thanks to generous sponsorship by the eScience Institute at UW, we will provide catered lunchs during the Saturday sessions. Although we haven't figured out the menu, we will make sure to have plenty of vegetarian and vegan options. If the food we have doesn't doesn't work for you, there is a food court open for lunch in the HUB (the UW student center) that is almost directly next door.

Social Media

 * We use the hashtag #cdsw

Thanks!
This event would be possible without all the volunteer mentors, the advice and direction of Open Hatch and support of the UW Department of Communication and UW eScience Institute.