Philosophy

What is Iota School?

Iota School is an organization that offers accessible technical training for humanists and the humanities-aligned, including professionals in cultural institutions such as libraries, archives, and academic associations. Organizations and institutions that partner with Iota receive a customized technical intensive for members of their community, access to ongoing workshops, and individualized self-study resources and experiences. Partnership with Iota also allows us to create curriculum made available to the general public under Creative Commons licenses and to offer technical training for individuals who might not otherwise receive it.

Accessibility

In our experience, humanists often feel alienated by technical curriculum and pedagogy, which is often narrowly instrumental. Iota curriculum places emphasis on context and emphasizes how programming languages and other technical interfaces are artifacts created by and for people. While Iota curriculum is practical and hands-on, we aim to bring learners with us by structuring curriculum to accommodate the cognitive challenges commonly faced by technical beginners.

Iota places an emphasis on making materials accessible to people with disabilities by adhering to WCAG guidelines and by making materials available and exportable in a variety of formats.

Flexibility

The Iota website and platform emphasizes the creation and combination of small units of curriculum—"iotas." These bite-sized lessons can more easily be assembled, and reassembled, into flexible lessons for specific needs, workshop formats, and audiences. This allows Iota School's offerings to be customized to the context.

Openness

Iota curriculum are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC 3.0) License. Iota materials can therefore be freely shared, copied, remixed, and used for any noncommercial purpose as long as attribution is provided to the author. Iota facilitates the export of curriculum in a variety of formats, including a download of all curriculum currently on the platform.

Iota School offers ongoing workshops free of charge to the general public. To stay informed about upcoming workshops, subscribe to our mailing list.