Remote learning environment

The educational products that are offered by Galvanize have two variants: synchronous and blended. Synchronous remote learning at Galvanize is called, more specifically, live online.

System Requirements

Office Requirements

  • High speed Internet with >= 50Mbps

  • Company-provided and configured VPN (if applicable)

  • Webcam (integrated or dedicated)

  • Headset with microphone (recommended)

Machine Requirements

  • 32- or 64-bit computer

  • 8GB Minimum Memory RAM, 16GB Memory RAM is preferred

  • At least 10GB of free hard disk space will be required for most programs

Software Requirements

The rest of this document details how to install these requirements on your system. Live online and blended sessions will occur principally through Zoom and Slack. Assignments and the practical application of the topics you will learn will take place via GitHub.

Zoom

  1. Install Zoom using the download for you operating system

  2. Sign up for an account if you do not already have one

Slack

  1. Install slack using the instructions for your operating system

  2. Once you receive an email from Galvanize with login instructions you can use the information to login

Note

Slack can be run either in the browser or installed locally.

Git and GitHub

Git is a version control system that lets you track changes to files containing text. Often these files are scripts or other files that contain computer programming code. Git through the use of GitHub helps enable collaboration, resource sharing and reproducible analytics. You will need a GitHub supported web browser to complete the assignments and tasks that are part of this learning experience. You will also need to sign up for a GitHub account if you do not have one already. Basic GitHub accounts are free. Please create one now if you do not have one already.

Tip

There are a number of settings associated with your GitHub account. For example, if you would like to keep your email address private see the setting your email address documentation.

Git for Windows

  1. Download the Git for Windows installer.

  2. Run the installer and follow the steps below:

  3. Click on Next four times (two times if you’ve previously installed Git). You don’t need to change anything in the Information, location, components, and start menu screens.

  4. Select Use the nano editor by default and click on Next.

Important

Keep Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt selected and click on Next. If you do not do this, programs that you need for the workshop will not work properly. If this happens, rerun the installer and select the appropriate option.

  1. Click on Next. Keep Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings selected and click on Next. Select Use Windows’ default console window and click on Next.

  2. Click on Install.

  3. Click on Finish.

If your “HOME” environment variable is not set (or you don’t know what this is):

  1. Open command prompt (open Start Menu then type cmd and press [Enter])

  2. Type the following line into the command prompt window exactly as shown:

~$ setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"

  1. Press [Enter] and you should see “SUCCESS: Specified value was saved”.

  2. Quit command prompt by typing exit and pressing [Enter].

Git for MacOS

If it is not already on your machine install Homebrew (another package manager):

~$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then install Git:

~$ brew install git

Git for Ubuntu Linux

Install Git:

~$ sudo apt install git-all

More Git installation info

See the installing Git documentation for more information and troubleshooting.

Website restrictions

Some firewalls prevent access to certain websites. You will need access to the following websites to ensure a successful learning process.

We use Vimeo for pre-recorded lecture videos. Using a centralized resource for version control (like GitHub) is a cornerstone of modern data science.

Additional Resources