Git is a version control system. Github is a proprietary hosting service that manages central git repositories. A git repository doesn't have to be public, but there are some great free hosts available if you do want to make your work available. Github, obviously, or Gitorious, especially if you're offended by github's ugly gender politics. Github's GUI is much nicer than any generalized Git GUI's I've seen, which is a vote for using Github, but it really doesn't matter.
So here are a few good reasons you should use git to manage teaching materials:
- Greg Wilson explains it pretty well to a Python conference. You have to listen to him talk about a few other things first, but the whole talk is interesting so go ahead.
so it is worth getting acclimated to a vital tool in their collective toolbox.
- My classes in data viz, newsgames, craft are all on github. The classes I've taught over and over are more thorough than the classes I haven't taught as often. I fine tune as I go -- these are living repositories, not finished products.
- The Lede Program at Columbia
- Derek Willis's Data Reporting course at Georgetown
- Dan Nguyen who is on his way to Stanford
- Chase Davis Advanced Data Journalism at Mizzou
- Tyson Evans Interactive Design at Columbia Journalism School
- Hilary Mason Data Storytelling at NYU ITP
- Jeremy Rue Coding for Journalists (plus exercizes) at UC Berkeley Journalism School
- Mindy McAdams manages a handful of lesson plans for her courses at University of Florida, Gainsville.
Mindy McAdams wrote a GitHub in 10 Simple Steps tutorial for Mac and Windows users.
I write most documents in Markdown which is the world's simplest markup language. Tools like Mou and ReText make it even easier to work with.
It lets me look back at how I structured a lesson last semester, rework the lesson plan and materials and keep moving forward. It lets me share lesson plans with my colleagues. It let's me see exactly what a collaborator changed on any one document or lesson plan.
I don't hide the repository from students, but I always remind them that if they do find it they should keep in mind that I maintain that repository for myself and they should look to the class site for materials that I've reviewed, edited for the current semester and deadlines, and published for their use.
I still keep a private document (in LibreOffice Writer, but Word is fine, too) where I break down each class period and keep notes about what I'm going to discuss. I don't need to make my notes on common problems I'm seeing in student work public, mostly because I don't want to edit those for the public eye. But most of my slide decks and lesson plans? They are in a git repository somewhere. So I can re-purpose them. And for the fall, I'm looking forward to dropping the class Wordpress site altogether in favor of Github pages.
PS. I'm open to other version control systems, but I prefer Git to Subversion primarily because it does a better job of managing offline checkins. I can makes changes and commit them over and over before I ever go online and push those changes to a remote repository. That's handy if you ride Amtrak as much as I used to, or if you work outside the office as much as I get to.
[removed the list of course since it's already posted here]
https://github.com/dannguyen/github-for-portfolios
I'll finish this partially-completed guide later this summer, but it's meant to be a walkthrough for non-coders on how to use Github to publish and manage things (e.g. webpages, lesson plans, etc...)...I think for most people, the concepts of forking, pull-requests, collaborating, command-line Git, etc. aren't features they need to jump into right away.