Kayleigh Lino on The Carpentries

A Wrap-up from the African Task Force

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

At the end of 2017 eight Carpentries community members volunteered to serve on the African Task Force to help strengthen the local community. At a meeting in February 2018 we decided to focus on mentoring trained instructors and on creating awareness of The Carpentries in Africa. In this short report we share some of the highlights of the past year, give an overview of our activities, and also reflect on the lessons learned.

What constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop?

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver, John Chodacki, Juliane Schneider, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Tim Dennis, Cam Macdonell

Given that Library Carpentry currently has nine lessons on its books, and a couple more in draft form, the question of exactly what constitutes an ‘official’ Library Carpentry workshop is timely.

On 17 May, Belinda Weaver opened an issue about this question, proposing what lessons should be taught for a workshop to be badged as Library Carpentry. The issue asked others in the community to comment. The issue received 10 comments from Chris Erdmann, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Juliane Schneider, Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati, Greg Wilson, James Baker, and Lauren Ko. Out of the current Library Carpentry lessons, the bulk of comments identified Introduction to Data, the UNIX Shell, Introduction to Git, and OpenRefine as the core lessons that should be taught at a Library Carpentry workshop.

CarpentryCon Experienced by the African Carpentry Task Force

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to The Carpentries and funding from conference sponsors, as well as TENET, the members of the African Carpentry Task Force were all able to attend the inaugural CarpentryCon event that took place at University College Dublin, Ireland, between 29 May and 1 June, 2018. Each of us has written a brief summary of our experience and takeaways from the conference, and we all agree that the event was an extremely valuable experience that exceeded all our expectations!

Revival of the African Task Force

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past five years, the Carpentries have gained considerable traction in Africa. Since the first online instructor training in 2015, more than 100 African-based instructors have been trained of which more than 40 had qualified. An estimated 50 workshops have taken place on the continent in countries including South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius, Kenya, Ghana, Gabon, and Ethiopia. More than 15 instructors from other continents have visited the continent to join local instructors in building community and teaching workshops. These include instructors from the UK, several states in the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.