Raspberry Pi in Education

Latest news from the Raspberry Pi Foundation Education Team

Spring has finally sprung in Cambridge, UK! The sun has been shining, the trees are blossoming and the education team are bursting with productivity. This month, we've entertained a group of primary school students here at Pi Towers, launched another exciting project with Google to provide even more free teacher training, and posted a new job opportunity at the Foundation.

Digital Leaders Visit Pi Towers

On 31st March, we welcomed 19 digital leaders from Caroline Hasslet Primary School in Milton Keynes to the office to thank them for the wonderful talk they gave at our 3rd birthday party at the end of February. We split the students into groups and gave them each a different resource to work from, in order to see their response to them first hand.

We gained some valuable feedback and had a fun time working with some inspiring young people. Here is Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, Sway Grantham's account of her students' day with us.

Picademy@Google

We love introducing educators to the Raspberry Pi: that’s why the education team are always on the road, at conferences, shows and events, sharing the Pi’s learning potential. Last year, we started a teacher training programme, and invited educators from all over the world to our headquarters for some fun hands-on learning. We called it Picademy. It’s been hugely popular, and so far we’ve trained around 200 teachers through seven events, in our own unique way.

We have huge ambitions for education. We want to train thousands of educators – no – hundreds of thousands of educators, and that’s not possible for our tiny education team, even though it’s made up of a cracking bunch of superstars.

Thanks to the generosity and support of Google, we think we are heading in the right direction. Today we are excited to announce our new Picademy@Google programme for educators, kicking off in Leeds, UK. This is another opportunity for primary, secondary and post-16 teachers to attend Raspberry Pi-flavoured computing and science training, but this time at a Google Digital Garage near where you live. The Digital Garages are a group of pop-up spaces – this first one located in Leeds Docks – which will help 200,000 British businesses learn crucial skills for the digital age, and use the power of the internet to reach more customers and grow faster.

“Google.org has supported the Raspberry Pi Foundation for the past two years in its mission to equip primary schoolchildren with affordable computers and has been impressed with their outcomes,” said Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google.org. “Raspberry Pi is leading the charge on what it takes to teach children computational skills but perhaps more importantly how to equip teachers with much-needed subject matter expertise. We’re thrilled to support them again.”

The Picademy@Google courses will be run by hand-picked community members and educators, and will be a mix of hands-on making, project-based learning and general hacking (think Picademy meets Raspberry Jam). They will run alongside our definitive Picademy course, and are, as always, completely free to attend for teachers. The Leeds Digital Garage will be open for six months, and we’ll be running a number of Picademy@Google courses there, so start spreading the news: sign-ups for teachers are open!

Easily Manage a Raspberry Pi Classroom with PiNet!

Over the past year and a half, Raspi-LTSP has become very popular as a simple and easy-to-set-up way of managing Raspberry Pi users and files in a classroom setting. Its 18-year-old developer Andrew Mulholland has recently launched PiNet, the new incarnation of this very valuable, free, open source project, which you can read about in more detail here.

PiNet’s features include:

Network-based user accounts, so any student can sit down at any Raspberry Pi in the classroom and log in
Network-based operating system, so if you want to change the operating system (for example, by adding a new piece of software), you just edit the master copy on the server and reboot all the Raspberry Pis
Shared folders to allow teachers to share files with students
Automated backups of students’ work
Automated work collection/hand-in system
Super-easy to set up and maintain
Completely free and open source.

PiNet is a replacement for Raspi-LTSP, not an upgrade, so if you’re already running Raspi-LTSP, you’ll need a new installation to get PiNet running on your server (PiNet will automatically update your SD cards the first time you boot up your Raspberry Pis after installing it, so you don’t need to make any changes to those yourself.) To make everything as easy as possible, a migration utility has been included in every Raspi-LTSP release since November to allow you to migrate user data and files to PiNet; read the migration guide for help doing this.

PiNet is already used across the world in over 30 different countries. To give it a go in your school, all you need is an old computer, a router and some networked Raspberry Pis! To get started, head over to the PiNet website at http://pinet.org.uk/ and hit Get Started!

We are hiring!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation are looking for a creative and enthusiastic educator with drive and passion to join our team develop our curriculum of resources, and play an active part in our day-to-day education work. Main duties of the role will include:

Developing a Raspberry Pi curriculum
Creating an overview of our current curriculum from resources by identifying concepts, skills, and subject areas
Setting up an advisory board to give feedback about curriculum that includes interested parties (academics, industry, community, etc)
Identifying gaps in resources based on curriculum
Creating resources for individual learners and teachers
Helping to devise pathways and progression through resources
Measuring impact and usefulness of resources
Working with Raspberry Pi Certified Educators and contractors to develop and quality-assure resources

Find out more about the Head of Curriculum Development job role, and how to apply here. Closing date for applications is 1st May 2015.

Keep on computing!

Carrie Anne
Education Pioneer
Raspberry Pi Foundation
@MissPhilbin

Python Software Foundation member and a good friend of ours, Nicholas Tollervey, has written a free O'Reilly e-book called Python in Education to help demonstrate how the language and community can transform a classroom.

Applications for Picademy North are still open. It will take place on 26th and 27th May 2015 at the National STEM Centre in York. Complete this application form to be considered for a place.

It's International Scratch Day on 9th May 2015! Check out events happening near you. Can't find one? Then why not host one? Check out our resources for some Scratch physical computing activities.