Raspberry Pi in Schools

[gibbo_ap]

Have any of you got a school raspberry pi yet? if so what are you using it for at present?

 

i have one at home running xbmc (files from my homeserver via win shares, not dlna; controlling it with iphone/ipad) i love it!

 

but am struggling to think of a use for one in school.

 

so far i have

• running display screens (we currently have old machines running them)
  
• portable thin clients
  

 

what programming are people doing that they cant do on PCs

[Jamman960]

I'm struggling for ideas also, I've seen a clip of an older student using it to run scratch but if we were going to run scratch I'd just stick it on the pc's in the IT suite and be done with it, the same goes for python etc

 

unless they're going to be creating much more complex programs and would require more than standard user rights to complete their work I don't see the reason behind getting them to use Pi's

[FN-GM]

could you use them as thinclients with thinstation PXE boot?

[Steve21]

Honestly the only reason I can see for getting them in schools (apart from the funkyness) is a) cost, or b) special projects.

 

As you said most programming etc can be done on the pc blahblah.

 

Ideas I'd use them for if we were doing it, would be something special like attaching camera to "insert RC model here" rocket/car/boat etc

 

You know, something that needs pc but nothing huge

 

Only my opinion though!

 

Steve

[gibbo_ap]

could you use them as thinclients with thinstation PXE boot?

 

no pxe boot, but the citrix client would work

[sted]

could you use them as thinclients with thinstation PXE boot?

 

tried rdp on mine and it was way too slow to be useable then so is the stock browser.

 

how do you get xbmc on or more to the point is there just an imge i can download somewhere all ive seen is about recompling on a n other linux box at which point i gave up reading

[bladedanny]

My First thought is it would be good for digital signage, I don't think xibo would work as the client is win only; I'm sure there must be other out there though that use a linux client.

[gibbo_ap]

tried rdp on mine and it was way too slow to be useable then so is the stock browser.

 

how do you get xbmc on or more to the point is there just an imge i can download somewhere all ive seen is about recompling on a n other linux box at which point i gave up reading

 

Raspbmc

 

its still buggy at present and crashes but is cool. it installs quite quickly, but when i tried to do it here it didnt like it (proxy), was a charm when it was at home!

[crutchfieldj]

Got one last week. So far the stock Debian build seems quite useful for tinkering, programming at a basic level etc.

 

Tried Raspmc and very impressed with it.

 

Someone has also released a penetration-testing toolkit for it, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet.

[jammmie999]

I think getting an Arduino would be better investment, and then you can teach the kids to build electronic circuit and programming an embedded micro controller. From what I can tell the Pi cant let you fiddle about with the circuits.