Raspberry Pi in Education

Latest news from the Raspberry Pi Foundation Education Team

Happy New Year to all our education newsletter readers! To kick off the year, we will be exhibiting at the Bett Show 2016 at ExCeL London between Wednesday 20th and Saturday 23rd January. Our team of Raspberry Pi in Education experts will be on hand to help you discover how Raspberry Pis can make computing exciting in the classroom and beyond. Find us at our STEAM Village stand to hear about our weather- and space-themed projects, sign up for our newsletter, and get involved with our free teacher training experiences. We will be joined by our colleagues from Code Club who will be able to answer all your questions on setting up your own after-school club. You can see what we got up to at last year's show here.

Free hands-on computing workshops at the Bett Show

This year, you can also visit us at our workshop space located at stand E463, adjacent to the STEAM Village. We will be offering the opportunity to participate in free physical computing and STEAM workshops led by Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, Picademy Teacher Trainers, community members, Code Club staff and volunteers, and our young Creative Technologists. We have a huge range of workshops running, from beginner to advanced, from Scratch to Python, that will give you the opportunity to get hands-on with computer science and experience the Raspberry Pi for yourself. To register your interest for a workshop, browse our event timetable below and drop by our stand.

Workshop participants will also get the chance to grab some exclusive goodies, including a special edition of our MagPi magazine and an educational book: Adventures in Raspberry Pi. These fantastic, free resources will help you to get started on your own Raspberry Pi project and learn more about our charitable aims, and they'll give you the confidence to teach others about the power of physical computing.

Workshop timetable at Bett

Raspberry Jam hits Bett!

For the very first time, we are taking over the Technology in HE Summit Space on Saturday 23rd January to run a Raspberry Jam.

Raspberry Jams are community-organised events with a focus on digital making and the Raspberry Pi computer. Jams are filled with talks, show-and-tell sessions, and workshops, all showcasing the wonderful, useful and often wacky projects that can be created with a Raspberry Pi, a little skill, and a lot of creativity. They take place all over the world - including, for the first time, at the Bett Show! Come along, share your physical computing project in our show-and-tell, take part in our activities, and get help with a project from expert community members.

Come and join us and be part of something special at the Bett Show 2016. It’s fun for all the family! You will need to register for the Bett Show via their website before entering the event (registration is free).

Raspberry Jam @ Bett tickets

Live coding in the Bett Arena

We want to make a lot of noise about science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education at this year’s event. Who better to represent these values than Dr Sam Aaron, creator of the worldwide phenomenon in live coding, Sonic Pi? Sam will be performing his own ‘algo-rave’ experience for attendees and discussing the benefits of a creative approach to teaching computer science, live from the Bett Arena, on Friday 22nd January.

Sonic Pi was developed in classrooms to teach kids an alternative to writing music using traditional Western notation. Instead, Sam will demonstrate how to use code to produce amazing new sounds and build them into fully formed pieces. Sonic Pi is free to download and runs on Raspberry Pi, Mac OS X and Windows computers. For downloads and resources, visit http://sonic-pi.net.

There will be other talks across the different stages at Bett by colleagues from Code Club, members of our communities, and the Raspberry Pi education team. These will cover a variety of topics, including:

The top five initiatives that are paving the way towards successful STEAM integration
Digital making: encouraging creativity in the classroom and integrating STEAM project-based learning
Excitement! Adventure! Making primary computer science more dynamic
Putting the Science into Computer Science
Inspiring girls to pursue careers in STEAM
Astro Pi: your code in space, engaging students in computer science

Picademy - professional development for educators

In the coming months we're providing a number of exciting opportunities to take part in Raspberry Pi-flavoured professional development both in the UK and the US.

Picademy@Google Manchester

Become the envy of your maker friends and colleagues by signing up to Picademy@Google Manchester, our free, two-day workshop series for professional educators. We will give you the tools and confidence to create inspiring physical computing projects and lessons using the Raspberry Pi.

Thanks to our partnership with Google, the event is free to attend, with lunch included both days, as well as a group dinner on the first day.

Dates:

15th - 16th February 2016
1st - 2nd March 2016
14th - 15th March 2016
21st - 22nd March 2016

Picademy USA

In 2015 we pledged to train 150 educators across the USA for free in response to President Obama’s call to action to create a Nation of Makers. Picademy USA kicks off at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California on 27th and 28th February 2016 and sign-ups are open! We will be selecting 40 educators to take part in early February, so be sure to have your completed application in as soon as possible.

Raspberry Pi at the White House Tech Jam

To celebrate Computer Science Education Week in December, Raspberry Pi was invited to a tech jam at the White House. We spent a day working with educators, students and developers to generate new ways to bring fun and engaging computer science experiences and computational thinking into classrooms across the US. Our idea was to use a thematic approach to solving real-world problems with hackable technology. Here you can see Marc Scott and me showing US Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President, Megan Smith, our example project of a community garden that tweets, which we helped create in a day.

We had a great time sharing our experience of the computing curriculum in the UK with other attendees who are passionate about the subject. For some, it was the first time they had seen a Pi Zero or experienced how a simple, fun idea could be transformed into a working prototype within a day. I look forward to seeing what becomes of the ideas generated on this day over the coming year, and to seeing some of the educators we met at a Picademy in the USA soon.

Until next time, keep on computing!

Carrie Anne
Education Pioneer
Raspberry Pi Foundation
@MissPhilbin

Are you a parent keen to get a Code Club started in your child’s school? Then why not volunteer and set up the club yourself! Read more...

To find out about what is happening across four days of the Bett education technology show, visit their official website and even register for your free Bett Show ticket!

Meet the teachers who are inspiring a diverse next generation of computer scientists with CAS #include at Bett 2016 and collect a free classroom poster.