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The Dovetail: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

This is the first post in a series of posts that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast on the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-05-05,

To update your local Workbench installation, open R and use the following code:

# Enable repository from carpentries
options(repos = c(
  ropensci = 'https://carpentries.r-universe.dev',
  CRAN = 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))
# Download and install sandpaper in R
install.packages(c('tinkr', 'pegboard', 'sandpaper', 'varnish'))

Upcoming and Current Lessons in Workbench Beta

At the moment, we are still gathering responses from our [original call for participants]({{ site.url }}/blog/2022/05/workbench-beta/) (if you haven’t yet signed up, you can still do so!), so there are no lessons scheduled (yet) for transition.

A note about the term “Workbench Beta”

I must apologise because the term workbench beta is not the same as beta stage in the lesson development life cycle. Thus, whenever I refer to a lesson that is testing the beta stage of the workbench, I will refer to it as a lesson testing workbench beta.

New Participants

From our [original call for participants in the workbench beta phase]({{ site.url }}/blog/2022/05/workbench-beta/), we have gotten responses from fifteen community members (in no particular order):

Updates from Community About Working in Workbench Beta

  • Joel Nitta has drafted an experimental package called {dovetail} that can facilitate translations of Workbench lessons.
  • Saba Ferdous has successfully transferred a lesson that was formerly in bookdown to use The Workbench:

Tips and Tricks for Using The Workbench

Need a cheet sheet for transitioning from carpentries/styles to The Carpentries Workbench? Check out The Transition Guide.

If you are contributing to a lesson and want to add an instructor note, mid-episode, you can use a fenced div with the “instructor” tag:

::: instructor

Remember to give the learners enough time to explore their mental models!

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