👉 Check out a new list of Observable features that are 🍎Good for Education! 🍎 We start with updates to Observable Plot, a fan favorite and ultra-flexible teaching tool. You can build data viz for students to analyze and engage with, or dig into Javascript to edit examples or code from scratch. Check out the new resources site and the changelog for more on Observable Plot.

🤩 Check it out! Use the chart cell type to quickly create simple charts based on selected data, without writing a line of code. You can also convert a chart into Observable Plot code, making it super easy to create assignment starters that support learners with any level of coding experience. Chart cell is another Observable feature that’s 🍎 good for education! 🍎

You may have caught our official announcement about AI Assist. It's built on GPT-4 and the beta requires an Open AI account to activate in your workspace. You can bet that we’ll be talking more about this shiny new feature!

Are you an educator with questions about Observable or do you want to connect with work in the community? Join us for a ✨ NEW ✨ monthly series of Education Community Drop-in Hours starting August 31. Show up with a question or help us plan by sending one in advance. Join us at any point in the hour and stay only as long as you need to. See you then!

Use the data table cell to explore data FAST. Add a data source, then toggle columns, filter, sort, and slice data without coding. Name the cell and you have a new data source. The data table cell is 🍎 good for education 🍎 How do you use this versatile notebook cell?

👋 We’re getting together next Thursday to chat about upcoming classes.👂🏼We’ll talk about classroom management and curriculum development with Observable, review some new features, and answer any questions you might have as you’re starting your classes. Join us from 11-12am PT Aug 31.

🍴Fork public notebooks to create assignment starters, remix examples from the community, or copy instructional resources from our demo class for your own classroom. Do you use forking in your class?

Less than two hours until this month's drop-in hour. Do you have questions about setting up your workspace or teaching with Observable? We’ll be talking about resources and new features for the upcoming semester.

How many of you found us through D3? If you’re looking for D3 onboarding or want a refresher, join us for a free 5 part series - Introduction to D3 with Paul Buffa starting September 25th.

Learn how to build a visualization instantly 😮 with this 90-second Observabyte from our product education team -

Chart Cell: Build a visualization in less than a minute▾

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If you or your students are looking to brush up on Observable, the Learn Observable workshop with Paul Buffa starts in just a few hours, at 9am PT. Join us there and check out a library of helpful recordings on our YouTube page.

Tags can help you organize your classroom and discover new concepts. Use course-specific tags to group notebooks in your workspace (ex: dv344-sec1, final-pt2), or use general tags to surface concepts from across the community (ex: stats, inputs, and plot), and provide students with additional resources and examples.

Question about the semester, classroom management, and getting started on the platform? Register to join us in an hour for an open discussion about Observable for Education.

Attending academic conferences or publishing interesting research this year? 🤓 Have you been to any industry events that stand out? Name drop below and let us know where you'll be👇🏼

Check out the recordings 📽️ from “Intro to D3,” the free 5-part class led by Paul Buffa from our product education team. Share this playlist with your students and keep up with our events and learning opportunities here. 🗓️

You may have noticed 🎉 2 new quick guides 🎉 in your workspace. First chart with no code and Adapt a chart snippet for your data are now part of our library. Once you complete them, quick guides allow you to fork them to your account. Check out all 8 guides here!

We’re hosting an Observable Plot Panel Thursday October 12 at 9:00 AM PT/12:00 PM ET. RSVP here: https://lu.ma/zyvijww3 Featuring: Deepsha Menghani, Data Science Manager at Microsoft and Tanya Shapiro, Independent Data Consultant.

We’re hosting an Observable Plot Panel this Thursday Oct 12 at 9:00 AM PT/ 12:00 PM ET. It will feature Deepsha Menghani, Data Science Manager at Microsoft and Tanya Shapiro, Independent Data Consultant, and will be moderated by Allison Horst, Data Scientist Advocate at Observable. RSVP here*.*

has renamed the channel from "edu" to "educators"

set the channel description: A place for educators using Observable in the classroom

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Curiously, how do people who use Pro Teams for their classes transition from term to term? In the past, I’ve spun up new Teams for each section, which has been fine because I only teach Vis once every 1-2 years, but curious if other people do things differently. (Also, I used to get set up with these new Teams by Courtney Francis--I’d be interested to know who my contact should be!)

Hi - I've been using Observable for my data visualization class this semester and it has been working out quite well. However, it appears that the network maintenance performed by Observable on Friday has impacted a number of student accounts. I suppose the timing was less than ideal, as the deadline for a programming assignment in my class was Friday evening, at which point I received a number of emails from students reporting errors in their assignment notebooks. However, what is more concerning is that a number of students still cannot access their assignment notebooks - the cells in their notebook simply do not run. The odd thing is that these students have shared their notebook with me, and I can run their notebooks just fine, so it seems an issue with individual accounts. I just wanted to see if this is a known issue, and if there is some way to address it. Also curious if this impacted anybody else using Observable for teaching this semester. Thanks!

Perhaps a broader takeaway is that instructors should be aware of scheduled network maintenance, so that incidents like this (e.g. an assignment deadline coinciding with maintenance) can be avoided. But if dates/times for maintenance cannot be announced far enough in advance, then it complicates scheduling for assignments.

👋 Hello, team!

Has anyone else all of a sudden been charged for their free educational Pro teams?

By mistake, several students joined the wrong workspace. Instead of creating your own. Can the owner of the workspace kick them out?

Hi, I'm going to be using Observable for a class this term at the University of Victoria. I filled out the form at https://observablehq.com/@educators-network/contact-edu, but haven't heard back. I was hoping to use a fresh workspace, because my workspaces from previous terms have hundreds of notebooks each, and it gets hard to manage.Thanks!

Hello, I have a student who is having trouble logging in. It seems their account no longer exists on the site but I remember adding them to the team last week so they had an account then. What's the best way to get support for this? Is there an email address we can contact and share more?