Getting Raspberry Pi into Schools

[SimpleSi]

Last week I posted this over on the main Raspberry Pi forums

Its been 2 years since the Raspberry Pi has launched and unless I've missed something - its penetration into UK schools is quite small.

 

I believe a real drive needs to take place to assist schools in using them - and I mean by normal teachers not by computing guru's and geeks of which I am both.

 

In my opinion, instead of concentrating efforts into camera and touch screen display additions, efforts on making the Pi easy to administer in a typical school need to come first. Then the clever add-ons.

 

We need classroom management solutions that understand the current IT set-ups in secondary and primary schools.

 

I myself have some ideas and I've touted them around - others have other ideas.

 

But we are just amateurs trying our best - UK schools need professional help and the Foundation is currently best placed to do this and I (personally) would rather back them than someone else.

 

BUT if nothing continues to be delivered then UK schools need to move on- the new computing curriculum start in 6 months -we can't afford to wait any more.

 

Hopefully, this post post will be taken as a call to arms/action and not a criticism. Its time to fish

 

Unfortunately, in the subsequent "discussions" things went south quite quickly and I was banned

(Live by the sword - die by the sword - its their forum - their rules -c'est la vie)

(And I had previous - and I carried stuff over to twitter etc etc )

 

Anyway, as you can see, the management of this esteemed and venerable forum have re-arranged the furniture and amalgamated all the old Pi stuff into the section.

 

So if anyone has any thoughts on the subject and whether we should/can get Raspberry Pi/Arduinos etc into schools to backup the new computing curriculum as I feel that if you can get a computer to interface to the real world - it tends helps to make computing interesting and if pupils are interested - they tend to learn more.

 

(Prodigal) Simon

[Dos_Box]

You were banned for making a point and trying to start a debate? And some people accuse us of being harsh!

[pooley]

I'm looking to start using PI with my Computer club I run, currently we use Kodu and scratch for programming but i'd like to freshen things up.

 

I'm interested in the PI Robot project I've seen you link to in the past. Any walk through on that would be great to see.

 

My personal experience of PI is small, I have 1 setup as a NAS/Torrent box that just sits there and feeds my Plex server content. But as my linux experience is 0 I haven't been too keen to play further.

 

So any tips/tricks advice would be great. I will follow this section with interest

[SimpleSi]

I've got previous haven't I

 

I actually got banned by daring them to ban me on Twitter (Schoolboy errror there!)

 

But as everyone knows here - I don't let my lack of polite english and poor on-line networking social skills hold me back from broadcasting my point of view

 

They are (effectively) a commercial company with a reputation to defend and they are trading heavily on the education label and I think I've come to the conclusion that they are primarily interested in fostering a new generation of - me's basically! - bedroom programmers - whereas I've moved into promoting computing/engineering for everyone in primary schools.

 

Now my schools are alright - they've got me. Some other schools have knowledgeable teachers with computing skills and me and them can do stuff.

 

But I want to see help for the others beyond computer programming training.

 

The whole new curriculm CAN be done withouts RPis/Ardunios but in my mind - we would be missing a trick do to so

 

Simon

[localzuk]

As I said on Twitter, you're not wrong. Schools have a very short period of time to get things ready for a new curriculum involving potentially complex new material.

 

Evaluating products and the services, tutorials and training that go with them cannot take up a huge amount of that time and as such many schools will ignore the Raspberry Pi as the 'official' support for schools is a little thin on the ground. Instead, schools will turn to things like Lego Mindstorms robot platforms or similar, which have a big company throwing a lot of work at them and make them look all shiny and 'child friendly'.

 

I'm afraid to say - that's what we've settled on for our primary computing curriculum. That and Scratch - which runs on all our existing PCs anyway.

 

If the Raspberry Pi had been more polished and 'shiny' so that teachers could pick it up and run with it, I'm thinking we'd've gone with them but sadly not.

[Dos_Box]

Want a slot at the next conf Simon? We could do with a Pi update with someone talking about them in a practical way rather than evangelising them.

 

I've got previous haven't I

 

I actually got banned by daring them to ban me on Twitter (Schoolboy errror there!)

 

But as everyone knows here - I don't let my lack of polite english and poor on-line networking social skills hold me back from broadcasting my point of view

 

They are (effectively) a commercial company with a reputation to defend and they are trading heavily on the education label and I think I've come to the conclusion that they are primarily interested in fostering a new generation of - me's basically! - bedroom programmers - whereas I've moved into promoting computing/engineering for everyone in primary schools.

 

Now my schools are alright - they've got me. Some other schools have knowledgeable teachers with computing skills and me and them can do stuff.

 

But I want to see help for the others beyond computer programming training.

 

The whole new curriculm CAN be done withouts RPis/Ardunios but in my mind - we would be missing a trick do to so

 

Simon

[sparkeh]

Mmm I am inclined to agree with the above.

 

We had a discussion about using Pi (brought up by SMT so there is an awareness) but it went south when we got into the actual technical detail about getting going with them. Again, Mindstorms, Scratch and Kodu won out as they are easily picked up and 'got on with'. Shame.

[BKGarry]

Again, Mindstorms, Scratch and Kodu won

 

Struggling to get people take kodu as a viable option here (although I love playing with it) but on the top of Lego Mindstorms, the latest version allows you to do text based object programming in it, which can then be sent to the device, so may be good for the more 'advanced' students to play with. :-)

[SimpleSi]

Just for those of you unaware of the main stuff I've done on the RPi - I've got Scratch to talk to the GPIO pins

ScratchGPIO for Raspberry Pi | cymplecy (simplesi)

Simon