In the spring of 2020, Unidata made an offer of resources through the Science Gateway project in order to facilitate online learning in response to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. Since that time, nearly three hundred and fifty users — mostly undergraduates in atmospheric science programs — have been able to take advantage of cloud-based resources to access pre-configured computational notebooks for learning and teaching objectives.
For the fall 2020 term, Unidata is once again offering to provide universities (or individual instructors) access to cloud-based JupyterHub servers tailored to the needs of university atmospheric science courses and workshops. By using the Unidata Science Gateway, instructors can add Jupyter notebooks used in their coursework to a dedicated JupyterHub hosted using Unidata’s resources in the NSF Jetstream cloud. Once logged in to the JupyterHub, individual students access pre-configured computing environments that allow them to work with the notebooks interactively, making and saving their own alterations to existing notebooks or creating their own new notebooks.
(For more information about using JupyterHub resources in the Unidata Science Gateway, see the original article: Offer: Unidata Science Gateway JupyterHub Resources Available for Remote-Learning Situations.)
Unidata has the resources to support a limited number of university courses for the Fall 2020 term on a first-come, first-served basis. If you teach a course in atmospheric science or a related discipline and you or your department are interested in having Unidata set up a JupyterHub for your use during that time, please contact support-gateway@unidata.ucar.edu and provide the following information:
- Your name, university, and department
- The course or courses you would like to support using a JupyterHub hosted in the Unidata Science Gateway
- The approximate total number of users who would need accounts
- The approximate number of users who would be connecting at the same time.
- The Python Conda environment you want to be available when using the JupyterHub.
This could be a custom configuration in a Conda
environment.ymlfile or a “well-known” environment such as the one used in Unidata’s python-training project. (If you are unsure about this step, we can help.) - If desired, a list of notebooks that would be pre-populated in the JupyterHub. Again, these could be your own custom notebooks (ideally hosted in a GitHub repository for easy access) or a pre-existing set like those used in Unidata’s python-training project.
- The name of an individual at your institution who is willing to add and subtract individual users via the JupyterHub’s administrative interface.
Also, please note the following caveats:
- Logins to the JupyterHub server will be based on a GitHub mechanism (OAuth). As a result, each user must have a GitHub account. (GitHub registration is free.)
- The JupyterHub servers created as part of this program will only be available through the fall term, and will be removed afterwards. Unidata hopes to be able to provide additional resources in future semesters as well; just ask us and we’ll do our best to make arrangements.
- Unidata’s resources in the Jetstream cloud are limited. We will do our best to accommodate all requests, but depending on the volume we may have to establish limits.
There is no cost to universities, departments, instructors, or students to take advantage of Unidata's Science Gateway resources. If you have questions about any of these details, please feel free to contact support-gateway@unidata.ucar.edu for clarification.
