June Announcements
June Announcements
Hello scholars! In addition to closing out your week with some focus, we also have a couple exciting new things to share with you today. Don’t let this distract you from your work, though- keep the focus strong!
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Student Project Showcase
We know many of you have already started working on group projects, which is amazing to see. While this is not a required part of the course, we are really excited to see what you all are working on, and wanted to give people an opportunity to showcase their work to us and to the community! Today, we are rolling out the Student Project Showcase!! This is an optional activity for students who are interested in sharing their work with us and their peers.
Why should I participate? Three reasons:
If you're interested in collaborating with a group, please use the redesigned Group Projects Spreadsheet to find a group or start a new one. Thank you to @Riyokosan, @Rosaria, @Amar, and @ioedeveloper for creating this! Instructions for the sheet are on the first tab.
Interested? Great! Learn more on the website about specific expectations, deadlines, and to get answers to your questions!
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Shout-outs
I received more than DOUBLE the number of shout-outs this week as I did last week, and half of them came in yesterday and today alone! Glad to see so many people feeling the gratitude after Thankful Thursday. Thank you for everyone who promoted the form in their channels, and thank you to everyone who took the time to shout someone out! Head over to the website to see what your peers had to say about @abhiunix, @John, @Elena Lestini, and @Kalhari Liyanagama!
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Share Your Story
You each have amazing stories of how you started, why you are so motivated to learn data science, and what you have experienced and learned throughout the scholarship. We'd love to share your stories with the wider world, to bring attention to your successes and experiences, and emphasize the importance of democratizing education, particularly tech education, internationally.
We know that the best ambassadors for our scholarships are our scholars themselves, and we'd love to give you the platform to tell your stories! If you’re interested, please fill out this form. This is optional, and you do not have to answer all the questions- they are just there as guidance, if needed. We will be collecting stories on an ongoing basis, and look forward to hearing yours!
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Kathleen OOO
I will be out of the office for a couple days in the coming weeks due to a US holiday and work travel. I will do my best to respond to messages while traveling, but please expect a delay during this time. Any urgent issues relating to the course can go to scholarships-support@udacity.com
Alright folks, that’s it for today! Have a great Friday full of focus!
Hello, scholars, and happy Motivation Monday!
This week is leading up to Sunday Fun-day on July 1. You have all been working extremely hard, so Dan and I are encouraging you to take some time off this Sunday (or any day you can!) to relax, rejuvenate, and prioritize your wellness.
We'll be sharing tools, tips, and resources every day to help you stay focused, motivated, and balanced. Check Slack announcements every day this week for updates, and we'll be updating the website with everything here!
Skills vs Experience: Constructing a Tech Resume that Gets Noticed. Join Nidhi Gupta, Senior VP of Tech at Hired for an exclusive virtual session on making your resume opens doors. Watch the recording here.
If you haven't already reviewed the updates to the FAQ page that go over how to ensure your participation is visible to us, please do so ASAP! We know you're all putting a lot of effort into supporting each other, but we need you to make sure we know about this effort!
Happy Friday, scholars! We are wrapping up Week 7 of the challenge course, which means we are at the halfway point! It’s hard to believe how fast time is going, especially when I see all of the amazing resources, tools, and collaboration you all are sharing here.
A couple announcements to close out your weeks:
To celebrate reaching the halfway point, and to recognize how much time and effort everyone is putting into their coursework, we want to take a step back and chill! Mark your calendars and kick off your July with Sunday Fun-day on July 1! On this day, I encourage you to drop the books, unplug, and spend the day doing something you love!
Sleep in, hang out with your kids, read a book, go for a walk, eat an entire cake by yourself- whatever brings you joy, inspiration, and relaxation, we want you to enjoy the day GUILT-FREE! The grind is important when self-teaching, but equally as important is making time to rejuvenate.
For people who can’t join on Sunday, that’s ok- just pick another day that works for your schedule. I will be sharing posts, tools, and resources every day next week leading up to Sunday so you have plenty of inspiration for your day off, and keep an eye out for a social media challenge (optional!) so you can see what everyone else is up to, too!
Shout-out to @Matt Cranford for the great idea.
#slack-help is back up and running as a channel, and it is being moderated by 7 fab student leaders: @naveena, @HASAN, @ahsmith, @Daniella, @dzebs, @Mackie, and @veronika.
New to Slack? Don’t panic- head to this channel to find out how it’s done!
On Monday, we launched shout-outs so you all have the chance to celebrate your peers. There are already over 60 shout-outs given, but keep them coming! You can write as much or as little as you want, but if someone helped you out, take a minute or two to acknowledge them.
For highlights from this past week, head over to the new shout-outs page of the website to see which of your peers were celebrated!
Student Leaders were announced last week, and as a reminder, they are there to help organize the channels, make sure questions/posts get responses, and to pass on vital feedback and insights to me. Find student leaders for the various channels here.
The #resources student leader team have created an incredible new database to collect all the wonderful resources that get shared on slack and on facebook.
Please submit great resources when you find them (but check for duplicates first). If you have submitted a resource, please mark it as #filed in a comment. Contact the student leaders via #resources on slack if you have any suggestions, questions or problems.
That's all for this week, folks! Enjoy your weekends.
Hi everyone, happy Monday! Excited to kick off your week with some exciting additions to community tools that will hopefully make studying and learning together a) easier and b) visible:
The #resources student leader team have created an incredible new database to collect all the wonderful resources that get shared on slack and on facebook. Shout-out to @Nora, @cordiallykathy, @EA Sara, @hirza, and @Abhipsa for all the work you put into this tool!
Let’s all work together to grow this database into a fabulous treasure!
There's a lot to celebrate about the community spirit here, and we want to give you all a chance to shout each other out when someone provides help, guidance, or support. At the end of each week, we'll highlight a couple students, since we believe your efforts are worth celebrating publicly!
Please complete the following steps when working together, so we can ensure we're aware of everyone's efforts:
Please only use ONE of these methods for sharing updates with us! You should not use both!
Updates on how to use the "Find a Study Group" Spreadsheet
We hope you had a great week! Before diving into announcements, I want to share that Marat will be moving on from Udacity, as his contract on the Scholarships team has ended. Over the past 6 months, Marat has supported two scholarships with aplomb. His #studentsfirst approach was central in all of his work, and I am so grateful for everything he did to shape both this community and the Google Scholarship community. Dan and I will miss working alongside him, but we are excited to stay in close touch as he takes his next career steps. Thank you, Marat, and best of luck!!
This also means that Marat will no longer be available to answer questions, and that I will be your main CM point of contact moving forward. Things are a little busy during this transition, so I appreciate your patience and flexibility, especially with DM response time.
Student Leaders
We hit the one-month mark last week and are fast approaching the halfway point! To help drive everyone towards the finish line, we’re excited to roll out student leaders this week. We saw a ton of fabulous applications, and you can find student leaders for your channels here.
Student leaders are there to help organize the channels, make sure questions/posts get responses, and to pass on vital feedback and insights to me. They are not necessarily subject matter experts, nor are they community managers, so please do not DM them with questions unless they invite you to.
Participation and Visibility
We’ve gotten questions about how to make your study group and other participation visible if you don’t have scheduled meetings, and we want to make this easier! We updated the website FAQs with a few more guidelines on what types of participation count and how to ensure your efforts are visible to us. Remember: if you do not participate through these channels, we will have no way of tracking your activity! We want to count you efforts towards phase 2 selection, but need your help to make it visible.
Slack Email
Speaking of visibility, a friendly reminder to make sure your Slack, classroom login, and application email all match! This is how we’re tracking participation across platforms, and if you are using a different email than what you used to apply, we will have no way of knowing it’s you!
Interested in a 1:1 Study Buddy?
@Lisa started a forum post for students looking to find longterm study buddies. This is great for people who don’t necessarily want to join a big group, but want to connect with one other person to work together. Find more information (and a buddy!) in her forum post here.
Hello everyone, happy Friday/Saturday, and congratulations on reaching the *ONE MONTH MARK* in your course!
You have been making incredible progress, and Marat, Dan, and Kathleen are humbled by the support, motivation, and humor you have filled this experience with so far. It is up to all of you to make this a vibrant, positive community to learn in, and I'd say you're doing a darn fine job so far. Keep it up!!
Since you all seem to kind of like data, we wanted to celebrate this milestone with some fun data about the progress you’ve made so far:
Calendar
The calendar is finally up and running without a time zone issue! Now, when you fill out the meetup form, it should automatically put the event on the calendar in UTC. If you click “add to my calendar”, then the event should automatically adjust to the timezone you have set in your personal calendar.
This group has shared over 90 photos of unique meetups held over the past month. Not only is it amazing to see your engagement with each other, but it’s also fun for us as CMs to get to put faces to names/Slack avatars. REMEMBER: Keep adding your photos for each meetup you have to the Facebook album, virtual or in person, and tag everyone who was there! Otherwise, we have no way of knowing who is studying together.
New Channels
Here are the new channels that have been created this week:
We got some stellar student leader applications this week, and Marat and I have been busily combing through them the past two days. On Monday, we will be reaching out to students who were selected so they know what to expect, and we will announce leaders to the broader scholarship community in next Friday’s announcement.
Hello everyone, TGIF! We hope you had a great week, and are excited to close things out with some updates and announcements:
Study Groups
Thank you all SO much for your patience with this! We went through the list of study groups you all made, created new channels when necessary, and added these groups to the website. Many of you are already working together, but for folks who are looking for a group, please check out the Study Groups page on the website! They are broken up by topic and region. If you don’t see a group that meets your needs, please feel free to start a new one, and add it to the “Find a Study Group” doc.
Please also note that while some of these groups may meet in person/virtually, some may just exist in Slack, Facebook, or other platforms. Remember to visit the calendar when looking for in-person/virtual study groups or events!
New Channels
Here are the new channels that have been created- it’s been a while, so there are quite a few!
AMA Schedule
AMAs have gotten a lot quieter as everyone has settled in to their coursework, so we will be hosting 1 AMA per week moving forward. Check out the website for the schedule over the next 2 months.
That’s it for this week! We will see you back here on Monday. Have a fantastic weekend, and happy learning!