Subcommunity Spotlight: CarpentriesOffline
The Subcommunity Spotlight blog series aims to raise awareness of the many vibrant subcommunities within The Carpentries and highlight their activities. A subcommunity brings together a subset of the broader Carpentries community. It may be local (e.g., a university-based Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., The Carpentries in Africa), or special interest-driven (e.g., HPC Carpentry, Carpentries-es, CarpentriesOffline). The series aims to foster connections among members, whether they live in the same region, speak a common language, or share similar interests. To learn more or get involved in a subcommunity, join the subcommunity channel on Slack (#subcommunity) or reach out via email at community@carpentries.org. If you lead a subcommunity and would like to be featured in a future edition of this series, we’d love to hear from you!
CarpentriesOffline
CarpentriesOffline was born out of the Software Sustainability Institute’s 2021 Collababorations Workshop. The idea was formed by a team during the Collaborative Ideas session, and the implementation began on the Hack Day. Our aim was to find a solution to the challenges encountered when running workshops with limited or no Internet access. CarpentriesOffline might also be of interest to those wanting to deliver High Performance Computing workshops without access to an HPC (or have difficulty getting students registered on an HPC).
The CarpentriesOffline community is currently working on three solutions to help Instructors deliver workshops. The first is a Python package called offlinedatasci that scrapes all learning materials from the web and downloads them to your local laptop or desktop. The package is available for download from PyPI. The package gives an Instructor access to the notes while teaching, even when they are offline.
This same package is used in the creation of a disk image (our second solution) that the CarpentriesOffline team is making available to turn a Raspberry Pi single board computer into an access point and web server which allows students to connect to the Raspberry Pi, simulating limited Internet access and giving them access to learning materials and downloading of software and data for the lessons.
Lastly, we are working on a mini high-performance computer (miniHPC) built from Raspberry Pis. This miniHPC enables delivery of the HPC Carpentry lessons when access to institutional HPCs is challenging.
Pixie, the initial mini HPC prototype.
Pixie updated.
How You Can Contact This Subcommunity
- Email: team@carpentriesoffline.org
- Slack: #carpentries-offline
- Website: https://carpentriesoffline.org
Blog Posts and Other Media Highlighting The Subcommunity
- #Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Jannetta Steyn
- CarpentriesOffline — CarpentryCon 2022 feedback and call for help
- Running Software/Data and Library Carpentries workshops offline
- Testing CarpentriesOffline
- CarpentriesOffline at CCHB24
Social Media Highlight
How can you support Carpentries Offline
Next subcommunity meeting
The community meets on the 4th Friday of each month at 14:00 UTC. The next joint meeting for CarpentriesOffline will be held on 6 February, 14:00 UTC. Sign up here!