How to access course notebooks with jupyter

If you want to access jupyter worksheets for my courses the easiest way to do it is to use git. I'll explain how it is done when you are using vse.syzygy.ca, though the same basic method works with any jupyter worksheet.

You should note that the worksheets use different kernels, so they may not work automatically if you have installed jupyter on your own computer. At the moment, you'll need both Python 3 and Sagemath. If you don't know what that means it is okay. The worksheets will all work if you use vse.syzygy.ca.

Once you have logged in to syzygy, you need to open the launcher. It will do that automatically if you have never used it before. Otherwise you may have a notebook already open. In that case, you can click the + sign on the upper left side of the page.

Once you do that, you'll see a series of images, the first row is called Notebooks, the second row is called Console and the third row is called Other. In the third row, click the button that says Terminal.

A standard unix terminal will open. In the terminal type

git clone https://github.com/michaelpetersubc/notebooks.git course_notebooks

It will do some stuff and transfer the notebooks to you. Once is it finished type ls in the terminal and you should see that a directory has been created called course_notebooks.

After a few seconds, you should also be able to find the directory in you list of files in the left side bar. If you click on the directory name you can see the files inside it, just as you would in just about any file explorer.

You can click on anything that has an extension .ipynb and it will open the corresponding notebook using the correct kernel.