Welcome to another packed week full of workshops and user group meetings, all organized by the GC Digital Fellows! Read on to learn more about the exciting events coming up this week. Also, you won’t want to miss GC Digital Fellow Nicole Cote’s Tagging the Tower post from last week, “Getting the Most Out of GCDI Workshops.”

Finally, if you’re having trouble with installations, curious about a technology we’re not covering, or want input on the digital project you’re developing, don’t forget that you can sign up for a one-on-one consultation over Zoom with a GC Digital Fellow. Just fill out the form at http://cuny.is/gcdi-consults.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter (@digital_fellows & @cunygcdi) for more updates and information about events, workshops, and resources. You can also find the GC Digital Fellows on Instagram (@digital_fellows), and GCDI is now on LinkedIn.

Hope we get to see you this week at one of our events!

Table of Contents

1. 1. Workshops: Workshops are structured, hands-on learning opportunities that are free and open to all GC-affiliated students, faculty, and staff. Registration using the links below is required to receive a Zoom link.
   2. User Group Meetings: User Group meetings are informal, interdisciplinary, free, and CUNY-wide communities of researchers and pedagogues who use similar digital tools. This week the Digital Archive Research Collaborative (DARC) and the R User Group will be meeting. These meetings offer a welcoming space for beginners through advanced researchers to discuss potential projects, current challenges, or specific problems. Instructions on how to join each group can be found below.
   3. Python and Web Design Series: If you’ve always wanted to learn how to use Python to improve your research, now is your opportunity to join a short workshop series that GC Digital Fellow Rebecca Krisel and Postdoctoral Fellow Chelsea Lane are leading this month. The series includes 5 workshops that take participants from the basics through ingesting data using APIs. Or, if you’re more interested in website design, you might prefer another series led by Chelsea Lane and GC Digital Fellow Zach Lloyd. Details about both series can be found below. Don’t forget to register for each workshop!

Workshops

NOTE: All workshops will take place on Zoom. Registration is free but required in order to receive the Zoom link.

Discover the Facts: Data Analysis in R, Tuesday, October 11 @ 5:00 – 6:30 PM
In this hands-on workshop, we will introduce data exploration, analysis, and visualization with R using the Tidyverse library and R Studio, tools that have become the standard for data analysis. Some introductory R knowledge is necessary, but do not let that scare you. If you take our online Introduction to R workshop before coming to this one, you will be fine. You must install both R and RStudio in advance. To install R, follow the instructions at this link; To install RStudio, follow the instructions at this link.
Register here

Introduction to Digital Publishing with Manifold, Wed, October 12th, 10:00 – 11:30 AM

Please join us for an Introduction to Manifold workshop where you will learn how to create beautiful, dynamic, multimedia digital projects that can include text, images, audio, video, and social annotation. We will provide an overview of Manifold and show you how it is being used at CUNY to create custom versions of public domain course texts and Open Educational Resources (OER). The workshop will include a hands-on section where you will create a Manifold Project then add a Text and a Resource to the Project. We will also cover how to customize your project’s structure, look, and feel, and how you can participate in conversations in the margins of your texts using Manifold’s social annotation features. This workshop is co-sponsored by the GC Teaching and Learning Center.
Register here.

What is WordPress? Build Your Own Website, Wed Oct 12th 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
In this workshop you will learn how to use WordPress to create a new website, including how to contribute to an existing website. The workshop will follow a hybrid model, first meeting online for an organized presentation. Two weeks later we will have an in-person hands-on session for everyone to explore the tool in person. Attendance at both is not required. You can sign up for a consultation with questions about your own project as they come up.
Learn more and register here

Text Analysis with NLTK, Friday, October 14th, 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Learn how to organize, count, and describe textual data with the Natural Language Toolkit. Part two of the fall Python Intensive Workshops: An Exploration of Research Tools for Beginners; some basic Python knowledge is required.
Learn more and register here.

Git It: Intro to Git and GitHub, Friday, October 14th, 3:00-4:30 PM

Sick of naming your files Final-paper_Final3_final_final.docx? Join us for a beginner-friendly introduction to both Git and Github! Learn fundamental concepts about topics like version control and begin using practical applications that can benefit students and scholars from all disciplines. 
Learn more and register here.

User Group Meetings

R User Group Meeting, Friday Oct 14th, 3:00 – 4:00 PM
Are you using R in your classes? Testing the waters with data analysis? The R User Group meeting (RUG) is a beginner-friendly and informal opportunity to learn about R from peers who are working with similar projects and tools. As a group, we will decide what R topics to learn based on participants’ interests. See GCDI Calendar here for more details, and join our CUNY Academic Commons User Group here in order to receive the Zoom link for the meeting and for updates about future meetings.

Digital Archive Research Collective, Oct 19th 6:30 to 7:30 PM

The Digital Archive Research Collective is a platform that aims to address the needs of students, faculty, and communities working on archival research at The Graduate Center. Our primary goal is to assist in the creation of digital archives and exhibitions. We also aim to provide resources (in the form of tutorials, best practices, and workshops) on the archival research process itself. We hope to foster community among digital archivists and researchers by promoting projects and facilitating communication across disciplines and institutional settings. For Fall 2022, we will be having monthly meetings.
Sign up with this form to participate!

Python and Web Design Series

Fall Python Series: An Exploration of Research Tools for Beginners, biweekly Fridays from 2-4pm, continuing Friday, October 14th.  

The Fall Python Series comprises 5 total workshops that take students from never having used Python before through skills such as text analysis and data cleaning to web scraping and using APIs. Participants are expected to sign up for all workshops in the series (listed below) and maintain regular participation. If you missed our Introduction to Python workshop on 9/30, you are welcome to catch up using our online curriculum and join us for the remaining workshops. Core skills will continue to be explained and reinforced as we work on projects over the course of the semester and in Python User Group (PUG) meetings that meet alternative weeks on Fridays from 3-4:00PM.

Please register for the following workshops to take part in the Fall Python Series:

• Text Analysis with NLTK, Friday, October 14th, 2-4:00 PM  
• Tables and Pandas and Python! Oh my!, Friday, October 28th, 2-4:00PM
• Web Scraping with Beautiful Soup, November 11th,  2-4:00PM
• Plugging into APIs, Friday, December 2nd, 2-4:00PM

Web Development Series

GCDI is hosting a series of four sequential workshops on web development over the course of this academic year. This fall, we will cover setting up the structure of a webpage using HTML CSS, and Bootstrap, and in the spring, we will add interactivity to our web pages using JavasScript and Leaflet. If you miss a workshop in the series, but want to attend the next one, please check out our online resource on HTML and CSS, or send us an email.

Find out more and register now for the next workshop in the web development series on 11/4 from 1-3:00PM: Using Bootstrap to create visually stunning web pages.