Librarians like handouts. To make a handout for this lesson, adapt/print from https://librarycarpentry.github.io/lc-data-intro/reference.html.
Requirements for this task are:
The purpose of this task is threefold. First, it is an icebreaker. Second, it helps learners find their confidence level and situate their experience and knowledge in the context of fellow learners. Third, it helps manage expectation as the instructor can explain to learners which terms, phrases, or ideas will be covered by this Library Carpentry workshop, which terms, phrases, or ideas are covered by other Library Carpentry lessons, and which terms, phrases, or ideas are covered elsewhere.
When collating feedback on the whiteboard, one strategy is to organise the board from sad (on the left) to happy (on the right), then to locate the terms, phrases, or ideas offered by learners on that spectrum. This performs three functions. First, it opens space to discuss which terms, phrases, or ideas people find or perceive to be easy to understand and what they find or perceive to be hard to understand. Second, it helps identify expertise in the room that learners may turn to for questions during breaks. Third, the instructor can return to the board at the end of the workshop to judge whether learners are more or less confident with some of the terms, phrases, or ideas identified at the outset.
The material in this episode is intended as a guide. Instructors are recommended to use this section as an opportunity to discuss foundational skills that they think are relevant.
The purpose of the section is to situate a Library Carpentry workshop in a wider landscape of practice and to demonstrate the value of commonsense approaches to software and data.
Ask other helpers what their favourite keyboard shortcuts.
You may find it useful to use slides to work through episode four (see below for potential slides). Before starting the exercise, encourage learners to work with pen and paper, explain that with regex there are sometimes multiple answers to the same question (that is, some regex is perfect and some does the job given the likely data structures we use) and point them towards places to test their regex: for example regex101 https://regex101.com/, rexegper http://regexper.com/, myregexp http://myregexp.com/, or whichever service you prefer. Also point them towards the quiz (episode five and six) as something they may move onto if they they finish the exercises early or look at after the workshop.
Two sets of sticky notes (ideally one red and one blue) are required to run a Library Carpentry workshop. Learners should be encouraged to put a red sticky note on the back of their laptop (raised like a flag) if they need help, and to put the blue sticky note on the back of their laptop if they don’t need help.
At each break, ask learners to provide feedback on their learning experience since the last break. They should do this by writing one thing that didn’t go well on their red sticky note and and one thing that did go well on their white sticky note. Collect these sticky notes, keep them organised so you know which section of the lesson their pertain to, and collate them after the workshop. Matters arising should be raised as Github issues for the relevant lesson.