Key Points

Building Your Own Carpentries Lesson


  • Markdown is the language used to write Carpentries lesson content — it is plain text with simple formatting rules.
  • The Carpentries Workbench template generates a professional lesson website automatically from your Markdown files.
  • Each episode is a single .md file in the episodes/ folder; the config.yaml file controls which episodes appear and in what order.
  • GitHub Desktop lets you edit lesson files locally and push changes without using the command line.

Additional Readings


  • Data curation is an ongoing process that begins when data is created, not after a project ends.
  • Practical habits — clear folder structures, descriptive file names, README files, and open formats — are the foundation of good curation.
  • The FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) are the standard framework for research data management.
  • Institutional repositories like PURR provide permanent, citable homes for research data.
  • Large-scale data sharing relies on tools like Globus that handle high-volume transfers reliably.