JSingleton

Hi guys, I'm starting a new project called Computing 4 Kids Education (C4KE for short). The aim is to help children learn computer science skills. Possibly using the Raspberry Pi and physical computing to get them engaged. I've set up a basic website at Computing4Kids.com but there's not much there yet. Mainly a button that links to a form for gauging interest. Feel free to fill that out if you want (it's short). The direct link is: https://c4ke.wufoo.com/forms/computing-4-kids-education Do you have any thoughts on the new computing curriculum? What sort of educational resources are people interested in and where do they currently get them? Am I right in thinking that some people are worried about teaching the new syllabus and don't know how to prepare for it? I've volunteered for code club, STEM ambassador and computing at school to try and help out. Not heard back from anyone yet but I guess I won't until term starts. I don't know what it will be yet. I'm letting users decide by finding out what people want. Perhaps something to support parents helping their kids with the new subject? Any ideas and/or feedback appreciated. Thanks!

Windows 10 for the Raspberry Pi is nothing like the Windows you are used to. There is no shell or desktop. It's mainly designed for remotely controlling things attached to the GPIO (General Purpose Input / Output). You need to build any interfaces yourself. I have a write up on my blog. You would be better off using LibreOffice Impress on Raspbian for displaying PowerPoint decks. If you only care about playback you can export to PDF as there is lots of software to display them.

I have found that sleep uses very little power and is almost the same as shutting down or hibernating (but more convenient when turning on again). Switching off at the wall uses less but then you can't use Wake on LAN to start the computers for updates or remote access. It's also a pain unless you have a breaker for the whole ring main in the room. Powered on energy consumption varies a lot depending on the hardware (and CPU activity) so you would have to measure this. Either with a plug in meter or with a clamp meter on the whole circuit (but this is less accurate as it only measures current not voltage). You might be interested in this project I knocked up Raspberry Pi Electricity Monitor | UnOp as it can be used for measuring and to teach kids about power consumption. As far as monitoring which computers are on, I've recently launched (still in beta) a service to do this at Shutdown Scanner (beta) and it's free to use. You just need to install the probe software on a single machine on the network and it makes nice interactive web-based graphs of when the computers are on in real-time.