Jokerman64 Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Hi Has anyone had experience with the Raspberry Pi with Junior school students? I have had interest from a few children and want to start a club. What would be the best kit to get to cope with around 10 children? I have never had a go with one yet. Any help appreciated.
Jokerman64 Posted February 3, 2014 Author Posted February 3, 2014 Wow - nobody been using Raspberry Pi? I thought there would have been loads of you!
featured_spectre Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 I would say the B board is the best one to go for, and get some cases. You can buy complete sets for like £50-£100 per one. So may be worth looking into.
Steve21 Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 ICT department doesn't want to pay for the amount they'd need Even one per 2 students, is 15 pi, converters, monitors....... blahblah A lot of it depends what you want to do, if it's just the basics you don't really need any additional kits, but if you want it to control things there's kits for lights/robots etc, a lot at BETT, I'll see if I can find the leaflets I had. Steve
FN-GM Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 @SimpleSi is an expert, I am sure he will advise
Koldov Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 (edited) I had almost this exact same problem! One of the teachers enthused about them being a great cheap IT learning tool... Got the business mananger in on it, next thing I know 4 appeared on my desk. No consultation with me... Nothing! Then I was summoned by the ICT co-ordinator who advised me I would be running an IT club with them! I was shoved off to a half-day council IT run session on Pi's and came away with knowing little more than I already did (and that's minimal). Apart from the fact that now I needed to tell the business manager he had in fact only ordered the boards (and cases) and now we needed SD cards that I have to get an OS on, power supplies for each of them, vga converters/monitors, mouse and keyboards lol. Not such a cheap IT learning tool now then! Needless to say they are still sitting in my cupboard! As I am the only tech here, I can't give it the time I would like to give them anymore than running SCRATCH on them anyway (which was what we spent most of our time doing in the training session). Kol. Edited February 3, 2014 by Koldov
Jawloms Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 I know this isn't your point, but do be aware that 8GB cards with OS on them can be bought from the Pi Foundation's website for only a fiver! NOOBS SD cards back in the Swag Store! | Raspberry Pi
theo_logical Posted February 4, 2014 Posted February 4, 2014 I'm a techie, not a teacher, and I run a Pi club in our secondary school one lunchtime each week. I really don't have the time or the experience but the students that attend are so enthusiastic I cannot refuse to take them. So, if nothing else, Pi's a really good way to get students interested in proper computing rather than just learning to use applications.
Koldov Posted February 4, 2014 Posted February 4, 2014 I'm a techie, not a teacher, and I run a Pi club in our secondary school one lunchtime each week. I really don't have the time or the experience but the students that attend are so enthusiastic I cannot refuse to take them. So, if nothing else, Pi's a really good way to get students interested in proper computing rather than just learning to use applications. So, do you have any advice for the OP? What kit did you need? What 'proper computing' do you do? Kol.
Jokerman64 Posted February 4, 2014 Author Posted February 4, 2014 Hi folks. Thanks for your input. I'm only likely to need around half a dozen as these are Y6 students and its a bit of a niche area. I will be wary of the council run Pi training courses then, I don't want to learn Scratch as we have been teaching that to Y4s for years.
Koldov Posted February 4, 2014 Posted February 4, 2014 Haha, let me know how you get on, this is looming large for me and I'm stuck for ideas. To be fair the guy training us did show us a remote control toy car that could be manouvered (badly) with extra software (part of SCRATCH lol) and some very basic music software (although my Commadore 64 sounded better). Kol.
Jawloms Posted February 4, 2014 Posted February 4, 2014 You can get minecraft for the Pi. It's free and there's tutorials out there on how to right simple programs to mod it.
BITS_BryanS Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 We've looked at these for some of the primary schools we support. Whilst they are quite neat, I think they are overly complex and involved for that age group. You can do the coding stuff on a PC, and if you want to do a bit more and get into the controlling of lights / motors /etc you are probably better looking at something like the Arduino 1
SimpleSi Posted February 18, 2014 Posted February 18, 2014 @Jokerman64 Just seen this thread. Robots are good fun to play with - get teams to compete against each other Robotics You can program them in Python but if they know Scratch then they can use it to control stuff using my software ScratchGPIO – Introduction for Beginners | cymplecy (simplesi) My blogs from last year might provide a bit of insight into pitfalls to avoid After-School ScratchPiBot Club | cymplecy (simplesi) Simon
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