Introducing <the elements />
12 Nov 2020
A refreshing glass of 01001000 00110010 0011000, brought to you by the xhtml element <img />. Photo by Roger McLassus, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Next week, The Center for Digital Learning kicks off a series of workshops called <the elements />. As the name suggests, it’s a series focused on elemental computing skills — skills that increase your power and autonomy as a scholar, creator, or citizen.
The first workshop in the series takes place on November 19 at 4:15 pm in Zoom. Talk to Me: Communicating with Your Computer Through the Command Line will teach participants how to run a number of basic but powerful programs using simple, text-based commands rather than clicking on the icons of files and folders in their computer’s default interface.
Knowing how to communicate with our computers in this elemental way is the first step toward learning how to do the sorts of things that many of us, increasingly, find necessary to our research — such as scraping the web for statistical data or textual content we’d like to analyze.
Even more important, perhaps, it’s the first step toward ending our reliance on the pretty wrapper that Apple or Microsoft has put around our computers’ operating systems — a wrapper that simplifies the computing experience at the cost of obscuring how our computers actually do their work.
Who is this workshop for? You — no matter what your current skill-level. We’ll take it slow!
The workshop is limited to 30 participants. To register, go to https://bit.ly/3nedRlf
Don’t hesitate to download and distribute our workshop flyer, below. We’re looking forward to seeing you on the 19th!
Workshop Flyer, CC BY-SA 4.0