# Student Initial Setup

1. We will use Slack for most communication and discussion. Please join the course workspace with your UW email address. See Canvas announcement for invitation link.
    * I recommend that you use the standalone desktop/mobile app rather than the web interface
    * To keep things organized, please try to reply to messages in threads (rather than sending responses in the main channel) whenever possible!
2. Create a free [Github account](https://github.com/join) if you do not have one already
    * I will distribute materials/assignments using Github Classroom, which requires you to link a Github account.
    * I recommend you apply for the [free edu account upgrade](https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new), which will allow you to create unlimited number of private repos with unlimited collaborators.
    * If all of this is new, don’t worry, we will walk through basic workflows during the first lecture/lab, and you will become more familiar in the coming weeks.
3. Accept the "Github Starter Course" assignment (see slack for link)  
    * This will create a new repo with your username appended (`github-starter-course-username`), and more importantly, it  will allow you to join the Github classroom and the UW-GDA organization
    * Give the `README.md` in your new repo a skim - it provides a nice, high-level overview of git/Github
4. Log on to the course Jupyterhub (see Slack for link)
    * This is the computing environment we will use for the quarter
    * We will review this interface during lab, but feel free to start exploring
    * If you have trouble logging in, send a message to the `#it_help` channel on Slack