Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, April 6, 2020
- 9:30-10:00 AM
- The “Life During Quarantine” edition via Zoom, with apologies to Talking Heads
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Buffington, Deakyne, Everman, Russell, Trana
Agenda
- Announcements
- How is everyone?
- Thoughts on future virtual workshops
Discussions
Announcements
- KU’s April 2020 workshop was canceled in mid-March.
- CarpentryCon2020 is canceled, per a recent Carpentries blog post.
- There are Carpentries blog posts and conversations on the Carpentries discuss list about online teaching:
- At the time of the meeting, the March 2020 meeting notes weren’t up, but they are now.
How are you?
We checked in on each other. Work/family/life balance, anxiety about the news and the future, other projects, and comfort cats were common themes. Good luck, everyone, with (in no particular order):
- writing
- coding
- moving
- sleeping
- parenting
And extra good luck to those who will be attending instructor training later this month! Advice from the group to watch for notifications about the training session starting about a week in advance. If you don’t get any kind of notice, start asking questions.
Future virtual workshops?
The April 2020 workshop would have been our chance to try out a four-part structure. We’ll keep this structure in mind for the future. There was some conversation about capacity within the KU and broader community for non-productivity-related community-building opportunities, such as Carpentries workshops. At the moment, the sense seems to be that folks can’t deal with one more thing right now, especially course instructors and students as the end of the semester looms. We will keep Carpentries workshops in mind as opportunities to build virtual community for the future, remembering that it will be important to start small.
Notes by JBK