A two-day introduction to modern evidence-based teaching practices, built and maintained by the Carpentry community.

Software Carpentry lección para control de versiones con Git Para ilustrar el poder de Git y GitHub, usaremos la siguiente historia como un ejemplo motivador a través de esta lección. El Hombre Lobo y Drácula han sido contratados por Universal Missions para investigar si es posible enviar su próximo explorador planetario a Marte. Ellos quieren poder trabajar al mismo tiempo en los planes, pero ya han experimentado ciertos problemas anteriormente al hacer algo similar. Si se rotan por turnos entonces cada uno gastará mucho tiempo esperando a que el otro termine, pero si trabajan en sus propias copias e intercambian los cambios por email, las cosas se perderán, se sobreescribirán o se duplicarán. Un colega sugiere utilizar control de versiones para lidiar con el trabajo. El control de versiones es mejor que el intercambio de ficheros por email: Nada se pierde una vez que se incluye bajo control de versiones, a no ser que se haga un esfuerzo sustancial. Como se van guardando todas las versiones precedentes de los ficheros, siempre es posible volver atrás en el tiempo y ver exactamente quién escribió qué en un día en particular, o qué versión de un programa fue utilizada para generar un conjunto de resultados en particular. Como se tienen estos registros de quién hizo qué y en qué momento, es posible saber a quién preguntar si se tiene una pregunta en un momento posterior y, si es necesario, revertir el contenido a una versión anterior, de forma similar a como funciona el comando “deshacer” de los editores de texto. Cuando varias personas colaboran en el mismo proyecto, es posible pasar por alto o sobreescribir de manera accidental los cambios hechos por otra persona. El sistema de control de versiones notifica automáticamente a los usuarios cada vez que hay un conflicto entre el trabajo de una persona y la otra. Los equipos no son los únicos que se benefician del control de versiones: los investigadores independientes se pueden beneficiar en gran medida. Mantener un registro de qué ha cambiado, cuándo y por qué es extremadamente útil para todos los investigadores si alguna vez necesitan retomar el proyecto en un momento posterior (e.g. un año después, cuando se ha desvanecido el recuerdo de los detalles).

The purpose of Design Dilemma is to encourage students to use resourceful and creative behaviors to think like a scientist. Students will demonstrate these behaviors to design and build a suitable structure for a fourth little pig. Although the use of the book The Fourth Little Pig is helpful, the module may be taught without it. This module is meant for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

OverviewThe purpose of Thinking Big is to immerse students in a series of research-based cognitive behaviors that are foundational to school and life success: creativity, logical reasoning, memory, and spatial reasoning.Thinking Big was developed by Frederick County Public Schools and is made up of single-day experiences designed to instruct students in the behaviors and elicit them without additional prompting. While arranged in order of difficulty, lessons may also serve as “stand-alone” experiences throughout the year grouped by cognitive focus. Most lessons use mathematical thinking prompts and manipulatives. The focus of the unit is not on math, but on thinking and reasoningThe lessons have also been mapped to the relevant gifted behaviors that are taught and observed through the PTD Program. There are two scoring guides: one that allows the observer to record the names of those students who exhibit a command of the cognitive behavior(s); and a REPI-aligned continuum, which allows the observer to note the affective behavior that undergirds a student’s high-level completion of the cognitive behavior. This module is meant for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually-impaired students, where appropriate.

Data Carpentry lesson to learn to navigate your file system, create, copy, move, and remove files and directories, and automate repetitive tasks using scripts and wildcards with genomics data. Command line interface (OS shell) and graphic user interface (GUI) are different ways of interacting with a computer’s operating system. The shell is a program that presents a command line interface which allows you to control your computer using commands entered with a keyboard instead of controlling graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with a mouse/keyboard combination. There are quite a few reasons to start learning about the shell: For most bioinformatics tools, you have to use the shell. There is no graphical interface. If you want to work in metagenomics or genomics you’re going to need to use the shell. The shell gives you power. The command line gives you the power to do your work more efficiently and more quickly. When you need to do things tens to hundreds of times, knowing how to use the shell is transformative. To use remote computers or cloud computing, you need to use the shell.

The purpose of the module, A Sense of Wonder, is to encourage students to use inquisitive and persistent behaviors as they wonder about their world. The module extends the strategies introduced in prekindergarten. These strategies include using questions to approach problems and identifying attributes to sort, classify, and make inferences. The attribute strategies serve as the foundation for subsequent Grade One and Grade Two Primary Talent Development (PTD) modules. This module is meant for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

The purpose of the module, All About Attributes, is to encourage students to use communicative and perceptive behaviors to think like a scientist.  The module strengthens observation, description, and sorting skills.  The attribute strategies serve as the foundation for subsequent Grade One and Grade Two Primary Talent Development (PTD) modules. Throughout the lessons, students will manipulate materials, play thinking games, and create products. This module is meant for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

Library Carpentry lesson: An introduction to Git. What We Will Try to Do Begin to understand and use Git/GitHub. You will not be an expert by the end of the class. You will probably not even feel very comfortable using Git. This is okay. We want to make a start but, as with any skill, using Git takes practice. Be Excellent to Each Other If you spot someone in the class who is struggling with something and you think you know how to help, please give them a hand. Try not to do the task for them: instead explain the steps they need to take and what these steps will achieve. Be Patient With The Instructor and Yourself This is a big group, with different levels of knowledge, different computer systems. This isn’t your instructor’s full-time job (though if someone wants to pay them to play with computers all day they’d probably accept). They will do their best to make this session useful. This is your session. If you feel we are going too fast, then please put up a pink sticky. We can decide as a group what to cover.

The purpose of the module It Fits is to encourage students to use perceptive behaviors to think like a scientist. The module introduces strategies developed in kindergarten. These strategies include identifying attributes to sort, classify, and make inferences in order to create analogies on collected observational data about our world and are for all students.

The purpose of Making Sense of Our World is to encourage students to use communicative behaviors to relate their thinking like scientists. The module introduces strategies developed in Kindergarten. These strategies include identifying sensory attributes to sort, classify, and compare observational data about our world, and are for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

This lesson in part of Software Carpentry workshop and teach novice programmers to write modular code and best practices for using R for data analysis. an introduction to R for non-programmers using gapminder data The goal of this lesson is to teach novice programmers to write modular code and best practices for using R for data analysis. R is commonly used in many scientific disciplines for statistical analysis and its array of third-party packages. We find that many scientists who come to Software Carpentry workshops use R and want to learn more. The emphasis of these materials is to give attendees a strong foundation in the fundamentals of R, and to teach best practices for scientific computing: breaking down analyses into modular units, task automation, and encapsulation. Note that this workshop will focus on teaching the fundamentals of the programming language R, and will not teach statistical analysis. The lesson contains more material than can be taught in a day. The instructor notes page has some suggested lesson plans suitable for a one or half day workshop. A variety of third party packages are used throughout this workshop. These are not necessarily the best, nor are they comprehensive, but they are packages we find useful, and have been chosen primarily for their usability.

The purpose of Preservation Problem Solvers is to encourage students to use leadership and resourceful behaviors to think like a scientist. This module extends the Essential Strategies of Attributes, Questioning, and Creative Problem Solving introduced in Kindergarten and First Grade, is for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

Tremendous Trees or Tree-mendous Trees encourages students to use inquisitive and creative behaviors, to think like a scientist. The module extends the Essential Strategies of Attributes and Questioning introduced in Kindergarten and First Grade. Students use questions to approach problems and identify attributes to sort, classify, and make inferences to create analogies on observational data about our world using this module for all students. The classroom teacher should work with a specialist or special educator to find or develop alternate activities or resources for visually impaired students, where appropriate.

Software Carpentry lesson on how to use the shell to navigate the filesystem and write simple loops and scripts. The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.

This lesson is part of the Software Carpentry workshops that teach how to use version control with Git. Wolfman and Dracula have been hired by Universal Missions (a space services spinoff from Euphoric State University) to investigate if it is possible to send their next planetary lander to Mars. They want to be able to work on the plans at the same time, but they have run into problems doing this in the past. If they take turns, each one will spend a lot of time waiting for the other to finish, but if they work on their own copies and email changes back and forth things will be lost, overwritten, or duplicated. A colleague suggests using version control to manage their work. Version control is better than mailing files back and forth: Nothing that is committed to version control is ever lost, unless you work really, really hard at it. Since all old versions of files are saved, it’s always possible to go back in time to see exactly who wrote what on a particular day, or what version of a program was used to generate a particular set of results. As we have this record of who made what changes when, we know who to ask if we have questions later on, and, if needed, revert to a previous version, much like the “undo” feature in an editor. When several people collaborate in the same project, it’s possible to accidentally overlook or overwrite someone’s changes. The version control system automatically notifies users whenever there’s a conflict between one person’s work and another’s. Teams are not the only ones to benefit from version control: lone researchers can benefit immensely. Keeping a record of what was changed, when, and why is extremely useful for all researchers if they ever need to come back to the project later on (e.g., a year later, when memory has faded). Version control is the lab notebook of the digital world: it’s what professionals use to keep track of what they’ve done and to collaborate with other people. Every large software development project relies on it, and most programmers use it for their small jobs as well. And it isn’t just for software: books, papers, small data sets, and anything that changes over time or needs to be shared can and should be stored in a version control system.