Christina Koch on The Carpentries

Incubator Lesson Spotlight - Reproducible Computational Environments Using Containers: Introduction to Docker

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Incubator Lesson Spotlight highlights a lesson under development by our community in The Carpentries Incubator. In this first feature of the series, we look at the progress being made on the {{page.lesson_title}} lesson, and hear from the authors about how The Carpentries community can get involved with the ongoing development of this lesson.

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/docker-introduction/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/docker-introduction

Learning Objectives

After this lesson, learners should..

Know what containers are and how they can be useful
Know how to find and use containers created by someone else
Know how to create and share your own containers
Understand how to take the next step in your use of containers

Target Audience

Our target audience is researchers who want to learn how to use containers to help manage computational environments and enhance the reproducibility of their research results. Learners should have some experience with the Unix shell, e.g., from having completed the Software Carpentry lesson, “The Unix Shell”.

Now What? Next Steps After CarpentryCon @ Home

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for making CarpentryCon @ Home possible.

First: if you attended CarpentryCon @ Home, please give us your feedback here!

Feedback Survey

CarpentryCon @ Home featured an incredible array of sessions on a wide variety of topics relevant to the Carpentries community. There was so much wisdom and experience shared across the 30+ sessions that whether you attended many sessions or were unable to attend at all, there is probably more you wanted to get out of the event!

Changes to CarpentryCon 2020

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are very disappointed to announce that CarpentryCon 2020 will not be occurring as had been planned in June 2020. Here are the changes to know about:

No in-person (or virtual) conference this year

Due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19, it is not possible or safe to hold an in-person conference in Madison this year. If you have already registered for CarpentryCon, your registration fee will be refunded.

We gave thought to a virtual conference as an alternative, but that too was not feasible due to a number of constraints. As the Carpentries team, the CarpentryCon task force, and the Carpentries community are all juggling new challenges and responsibilities in the face of the pandemic, we know that people’s capacity to organise and attend an event like CarpentryCon is far more limited, which informed our decision, especially as we would like CarpentryCon to be an inclusive, accessible event.

CarpentryCon 2020 Financial Aid

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In order to promote as well as grow inclusive, computational communities and leaders, #CapentryCon2020Madison is providing a limited amount of financial support to facilitate participation at CarpentryCon 2020 in Madison.

Financial aid is aimed at, but not limited to postgraduate students, early-career researchers and academics who are unable to fully meet conference expenses through other funding means. Interested applicants should be able to demonstrate their potential for leadership and the creation of value for computational research by expanding the reach of the Carpentries in their communities and beyond.

Extending Gratitude to CarpentryCon 2020's Task Force

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries’ CarpentryCon Task Force exists to organise and deliver the next CarpentryCon - a remarkable global assemblage of Carpentries members and friends. The Task Force started working together on January 22, 2019 and has not looked back! Our major planning milestones have answered these questions; the what, when and where? We are focusing on Growing inclusive, computational communities and leaders, between 29th June and 1st July 2020, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, United States. But beyond this answer, in the planning process, we ended with two top venues, leading to the inception of the annual CarpentryCon cycle from bi-annual, and a planned venue for CarpentryCon 2021 to be a pass-on baton to the next Task Force. Next year’s CarpentryCon has achieved a lot in the planning this year led by Christina and Ouso.

CarpentryCon Community Call, November 6

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We recently announced that CarpentryCon 2020 will be held in Wisconsin from June 29 to July 1, 2020 on the theme “Growing inclusive computational communities”.

After many rounds of community engagement on the calls for sessions, dates and times, as well as the call for themes and venue suggestions, we have chosen the theme above as a natural outgrowth of the previous CarpentryCon discussion. As the key biennial event of The Carpentries aimed at teaching foundational aspects of digital literacy, the focus shall be on the audience. We will be counting on the community as always to provide feedback and guidance to the steering committee, which presently consists of a well-mixed set of experienced organisers and eager volunteers.

Workshop Participant Fees

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Workshop Participant Fees

A frequently asked question by people running their first Carpentries workshop is whether or not they can (or should) charge people to attend.

This blog post outlines some of the workshop organisation logistics that can help determine whether or not it makes sense to charge for a workshop.

Workshop Costs

One of the major reasons to charge for a workshop is to cover costs. Common costs for a workshop can include:

Instructor Training Curriculum Updates

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Training Curriculum is a centrepiece among The Carpentries workshops. It is constantly in use as we bring new Instructors on board, and our engaged Instructor Trainer community brings a steady stream of new ideas for its improvement. This makes for a fun community, interesting discussions… and a lengthy to-do list! In the month of October we organised a “push” on the Instructor Training curriculum, in which we made good progress on backlogged issues, organisation, and usability for new Instructor Trainers. This is not a full “release” – we’re about halfway to where we’d like to be for our next published update – but we are pleased with what we’ve accomplished and hope you will be, too. We are particularly grateful to the community of Instructor Trainers whose feedback and contributions have both inspired this work and helped to complete it!

Software Carpentry: Considering the Future

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When Software Carpentry became part of the merged Carpentries this January, outgoing Software Carpentry steering committee members Rayna Harris and Christina Koch were tasked with continuing the work of the steering committee. For the past several weeks, we’ve been working together with a small group to determine what Software Carpentry needs as a sub-community to grow and thrive in the future, and we have identified two primary goals.

One first goal is a restatement of Software Carpentry’s mission. The Carpentries are growing by leaps and bounds, so this seems like a timely moment to stop and think about what Software Carpentry is doing as a branch of The Carpentries and why. This exploration of mission and identity isn’t just so we can have a nice tagline, but to provide direction and a reference point for future decisions that impact the community.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our 2017 Community Service Award winner: Anelda van der Walt

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are happy to honor Anelda van der Walt as our 2017 Community Service Award winner. We received seven independent nominations for Anelda this year, which is a testament to her commitment to both individual people and the broader community.

Starting from scratch, Anelda planted the tiny seed that has now become the phenomenal growth of Software and Data Carpentry in South Africa, not to mention its spread to an ever-growing list of other African countries, such as Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Gabon, Mauritius, and Ethiopia.

Our 2017 Community Service Award winner: Anelda van der Walt

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re starting a new round of mentoring groups, centered on specific lessons

Mentorship is an important part of the Carpentry experience. As Instructors, we both teach and mentor our Learners. We also mentor each other as Instructors, learning something new from each other every time we teach and interact with one another. The Mentoring Subcommittee offers guidance to new and continuing Instructors through weekly discussion sessions, where Instructors from the global Carpentry community gather to share their experiences and learn from each other. This is a fantastic opportunity to interact with other Carpentry Instructors from around the world.

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Maintaining Lessons - Community Perspectives

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our September community call on lesson maintenance brought up many good ideas around the lesson maintenance process for Software and Data Carpentry lessons. If you weren’t able to make the call, below is a summary of our discussion and potential avenues for growth.

Our discussion focused around two major questions: what do the lesson maintainers do, and what are some of the reasons to be a lesson maintainer?

Software Carpentry Lesson Maintenance: Be Part of the Conversation!

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Come share your experience and ideas about maintaining the Software Carpentry lessons

We invite all members of the Software Carpentry community to participate in two upcoming events centered around maintaining our lessons:

Community Call this week on Thursday, September 21
Task Force for the future of the Software Carpentry lesson organization

Community Call

We will be discussing lesson maintenance on this week’s community call, happening on Thursday.
On the call, we’ll gather community aspirations and concerns about the current lessons and their maintenance. We also will ask for everyone’s input on how we can best support and recognize the valuable work of our maintainers and contributors. See the etherpad for times, agenda and to sign up. Anyone from the community is welcome to join.

Community Service Awards - 2017 Edition

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Is there a Software Carpentry community member you’ve noticed working extra hard to help our organization?

If so, consider nominating this person for a Community Service Award!

The Community Service Award was inaugurated last year to recognize the crucial role of volunteer contributions to the work of the Software Carpentry Foundation. This award acknowledges individuals whose work, in the Steering Committee’s opinion, significantly improves the Foundation’s fulfillment of its mission and benefits the broader community.

Get Involved With Mentoring

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Are you a new Software or Data Carpentry instructor? Do you remember what it was like to be a new instructor? Are you interested in improving your own teaching skills? Do you want to connect with other instructors to share teaching ideas and experience?

The mentoring committee is a group of Software and Data Carpentry community members who organize initiatives to support instructors and we’re looking for new members.

Get Involved With Mentoring

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The mentoring committee is a group of Software and Data Carpentry community members who organize initiatives to support instructors and we’re looking for new members.

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are excited to announce an upcoming series of panel discussions designed to help our community members become informed about the variety of career paths available to computationally literate members of their fields. Panel discussions will be held virtually in the months of January, February and March (tentative dates, below) with each session featuring 3-4 senior community members in Carpentry-related professions, including: tenured faculty, communicators/consultants, research software engineers, industry scientists, etc.

2017 Election: Christina Koch

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

To begin, I present:

Notable events in Christina’s Software Carpentry career:

2013-April: Graduate from grad school (Masters degree in mathematics).

2013-May: Attend Software Carpentry workshop (and see git and Python for the first time).

2014-January: Teach first Software Carpentry workshop.

2014-March: First time travelling abroad for Software Carpentry.

2014-May: Hear about a job through the Software Carpentry blog.

2014-October: Get the job (which is still my job).

2014-November: Become a lesson maintainer.

2015-December: First time leading an instructor training.

2016-January: Switch roles, from lesson maintainer to mentoring committee chair.

2016-June: Teach first Data Carpentry workshop.

To this list, I would like to add:

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Join our new Mentorship Program!

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing quickly! Over a hundred new instructors have been trained in the past two months. These new instructors join our community because they’re excited to help fellow researchers who are struggling to analyze their data and because they share our commitment to reproducibility and open access. In spite of these shared values, however, a third of our instructors never go on to teach with us.

Announcing the Open Science Grid User School 2016

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you could access hundreds or thousands of computers for your scholarly work, what could you do?

How could it transform your work?

What discoveries might you make?

We are seeking applicants for the 2016 Open Science Grid (OSG) User School, which takes place 25–29 July at the beautiful University of Wisconsin in Madison. Participants will learn to use high throughput computing (HTC) to harness vast amounts of computing power for research, applicable to nearly any field of study (e.g., physics, chemistry, engineering, life sciences, earth sciences, agricultural and animal sciences, economics, social sciences, medicine, and more).

Announcing New Unix Shell Maintainer

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After an application and selection process, Ashwin Srinath has been selected as a new co-maintainer of the Unix Shell lesson, joining Gabriel Devenyi and replacing outgoing maintainer Christina Koch.

Introducing Ashwin

Ashwin is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University, and soon-to-be member of Clemson’s Cyberinfrastructure Technology Integration (CITI) research computing group. His research areas include computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance computing. He spends most days programming and making mistakes, and some days teaching others how not to make them. Ashwin has formerly served as co-maintainer for the Software Carpentry MATLAB materials.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 02

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On January 26, we ran the 2nd round of Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions. Rayna and Christina hosted the morning debriefings while Bill and Raniere hosted the evening debriefing. A topic of interest today was on installations. Read on for details.

Thoughts on the “check installation” scripts

There is in an ongoing discussion about whether or not the “check installation” scripts for workshop pages should be updated. So, we asked the attendees how often these were being using and how useful they were. Some comments we received were:

Three Flavors of Instructor Training

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been a busy few months for instructor training: along with a two-day class at the University of Manchester, we also wrapped up a pilot of a new kind of multi-week course and a two-day version of the same material. We have also been training four new trainers, and have put the first complete draft of the training materials online. Here's some of what we think we've learned so far.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 22

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There were relatively few attendees at the 22nd round of debriefing for instructors on November 10, but we thought we'd include a few quick notes about two specific topics: using Software and Data Carpentry workshops to reach out to potential users of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, and exploring new lesson materials related to databases.

High Performance Computing

University of Manitoba hosted a Software Carpentry workshop at the end of October in conjunction with Compute Canada. In addition to the normal half-day lessons in Unix shell, Git, and intro to Python, this workshop featured an introduction to using WestGrid/Compute Canada resources on the afternoon of the second day. The instructor for this workshop, Hossein Pourreza, said that this last lesson module was used as a capstone for helping reinforce and integrate material from the previous lessons, and appeared well-received by the students. Given that there are few training opportunities for using the cluster, this appears to be a great way to introduce new potential users to the basic tools they'll need to get started with larger-scale analysis.

Not Quite Lesson Material

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Originally posted on the author's blog.

Lesson plans are a funny thing. The Software Carpentry lessons are an odd balance of a lesson to be read (like a textbook) and a lesson plan for instructors, where they bring the text to life via speaking, live coding, and doing exercises.

This text format doesn't lend itself well to a few activities I've used in Software Carpentry workshops. So I'm going to throw them up here for other instructors to look at - feel free to add your own activities in the comments, or submit another blog post!

Invitation to Millions of Compute Hours: Announcing the Open Science Grid User School

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you could access thousands or even millions of hours of computing, how would it transform your research? What discoveries might you make?

Each year the NSF-funded Open Science Grid (OSG) selects a group of 25-30 students to attend the OSG User School, a week-long dive into high-throughput computing approaches, technologies, and skills, within a larger context of computational research design that students can take into their future careers as researchers. Students across the country from nearly any research discipline are invited to apply, and selected applicants will obtain direct access to the OSG beyond the duration of the school.

A Training Veteran Weighs In

Thu, 08 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm not sure if I qualify as a "instructional training veteran", but having participated in both the online Software Carpentry (SWC) instructor training, and two versions of the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) (on which the latest "live" SWC training was modeled) at the University of British Columbia, I'd like to share a few comments comparing my experience with both and what I've valued from each. Feel free to add your own impressions of the SWC or other instructional training in the comments at the end.

Software Carpentry bootcamp at GARNet

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The second week of April the University of Warwick in the UK hosted its first Software Carpentry bootcamp. The bootcamp was organised by GARNet which is a UK-based research network for the UK Arabidopsis and wider plant research community. GARNet facilitates collaboration and interaction between different researchers and supports skills development.