Instructions:
Feel free to use this email as a reference for as the first email to your pod students. Copy the contents below and fill in the spaces with your information or the pod-specific information. Feel free to modify the email, but please keep the instructions (forms/discord).
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Title: I will be your NMA TA!
Hello [insert pod-name],
I will be your teaching assistant for Neuromatch Academy (NMA). I am very much looking forward to meeting all of you and to a great academy. We will all learn a lot about neuroscience, the questions that move us and the field, and learn a lot from one another. Let me briefly introduce myself:
My name is ____, I use (___/___) pronouns and I'm a ____ at ___. My research is ___. I completed my studies in ___ at ___ . In my spare time I ____. I'm really excited about all aspects of computation and math that helps us understand how the brain works, and can't wait to share with you the amazing material the organizers have prepared.
Administrative : You should have received a number of emails from NMA over the past few weeks, please make sure they don't land on the spam folder!!
Discord: You will receive an invitation to Discord , the forum we will be using for communication. You will receive this invitation in the next couple of days.
Surveys: There were two forms that were sent, if you haven't filled them up please do:
- Pre-course survey (~15-20 minutes): (You received a unique link just for you in your email! Search for "pre-course" or "precourse")
- Tech survey ( ~3 minutes): https://airtable.com/shrVf27AUoB78yb1Z
Zoom link: During the course, we will use a single zoom link to meet. This zoom link will be pinned to our pod's channel in the Discord server.
Math Refresher Course: Some of you are signed up to take part in the 'Pre-reqs Refresher' math days on June 30-July 2nd. Please let me know if you plan to attend. Remember that the main course starts on July 5. For the Pre-reqs Refresher course and for the main NMA Computational Neuroscience course, we will use this same zoom link throughout, every weekday in our pod's time slot which is ____. The Zoom link will also be pinned on our pod's Discord channel and I will email it out later.
You can use this widget to figure out which window of time this slot corresponds to based on your own time zone. https://neuromatchacademy.github.io/widgets/tz.html
We will figure out which specific times during that time window to meet for working on projects before the Academy starts.
Your next steps:
- Introduce yourself!
- Feel free to reply all to this email so we can start getting to know one another. Tell us about yourself (e.g., your name, where you live, what you are studying/researching, and anything else you'd like to share.)
- Let us know what pronouns you use (see this link or this one for details)
- Let me know if there's anything else I should know about. For example:
- Let me know if you have any scheduled constraints that interfere with the course, including religious holidays (e.g. Eid Al-Adha), we might be able to accommodate these with enough time.
- Let me know if you have prayer schedule that overlaps with the course hours
- Get on Discord via an invitation link that will be emailed directly to you from Neuromatch Support. You can (here is a video to help you learn how to do this once you receive the link).
- Once you get the invitation and join the server, make sure you follow the instructions to interact with the "NMA bot" and get authenticated via your email.
- Then, you'll be able to discuss with your pod there on our private pod channel _______________, and also other students in your mega-pod (a group of pods!) and in all of NMA!
- Add this google calendar to your own calendar so you can see when our tutorials happen in your local timezone:
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Slot 1: (Asia/Pacific)
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Slot 2 and 3: (Europe/Africa)
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Slot 4 and 5: (Americas)
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Open the link and click on the
button to add to your google calendar.
- Fill in the forms if you haven't.
Best,
_______________