Refer to JupyterHub as the "Canvas JupyterLab" or "MDS Cloud JupyterLab"

[joelostblom]

I am getting several questions about what the difference is between JupyterHub and Lab, which I don't think is good for students to focus on in the beginning. What do you think @ttimbers ?

A few are also confused regarding how they can save things locally with JupyterLab and if they have to use VS Code when working on files that are on their computer versus on the canvas JupyterHub cloud. Part of this probably comes from that JupyterLab runs in a browser, but I think the fact that there is also a cloud instance of JupyterLab contributes to this so we need to be even clearer about this in the future (I will point it out again in my next video).

[joelostblom]

@flor14 and @ttimbers I think this is something we should be really clear about this year both when showing them jupyterlab in 521 and when talking about Jupyterlab in the cloud. I think the key is to emphasize that JupyterLab can run both on your computer or in the (MDS) cloud, and that when it runs on your computer it has access to all your files and does not require an internet connection. I did mention this last year, but I think we need to say it multiple times since I have noticed that when people see something in the web browser they often think it is online automatically and there were students messaging me late in the fall still not quite grasping the differences.

Thoughts?

[flor14]

It seems a good suggestion, I will try to include it explicitly in the classes and show you in advance to see if you agree. Thank you, Joel!

[joelostblom]

@flor14 Do you remember if you added this in the lecture material and we can go ahead and close this issue?

[ttimbers]

Are we even using a Jupyter Lab on a server this year?