Raspberry Pi in Education

Weather Station Project

Here in Cambridge, the weather can change from being bright and sunny to cold and rainy in the space of a few hours. It can be so interesting that our very own weather man, Dave Honess has built a weather station in our office and is now looking to roll out the project to schools. 

This Raspberry Pi weather station project, sponsored by Oracle, is about to enter its prototype field-testing phase. Twenty units will be distributed to a closed list of participants, who will each set up and deploy a station of their own. These field trials are intended to test the hardware against the elements before we go into full-scale production. Assuming all goes well, we plan to distribute 1000 kits to schools throughout the world.

The final weather stations will be supplied in kit form and will include a Raspberry Pi B+, weather station HAT (a type of add on board for the Raspberry Pi) developed by Dave, and a number of sensors and peripherals to record events, networking together so that your school can be part of a team of schools collecting and analysing weather data together from all over the world. The project also includes a cross-curricular scheme of work to accompany the kit which will allow the teaching of programming, big data, electronics and geography. We aim to have the kits available in the new year, and will be announcing the ability to register your school’s interest before the end of term. Drop by our stand at BETT to learn more or keep an eye out on our blog for more info. 
 

Hour of Code

It is Hour of Code  week on 8th December 2014 - 14th December 2014. After the success of last year, Code.org are looking to get even more people coding for just one hour. If you are looking for a lesson plan or activity that will take roughly an hour and need no previous experience, then look no further than our very own Sonic Pi Competition Lesson. All entries will be in with a chance of winning a prize, and we have extended the deadline to the January 9th 2015.

Sonic Pi is a great way to get creative with music and computing. Sonic Pi has been used to teach computing lessons at KS2 and 3 in schools in the UK, and in music lessons as part of the Sonic Pi: Live & Coding Project.

We are running a competition to hunt down the UK's best young musical coding talent from outer space! Create a two-minute piece of music on the theme Space Wonders with Sonic Pi v2.0, and be in with a chance of winning one of hundreds of Raspberry Pi kits for individual students or an entire class, along with workshops with artists Juneau Projects and live coder musician Sam Aaron (who created the Sonic Pi software), for an entire school.

Be sure to keep an eye on our website and blog. We'll be releasing more Hour of Code resources and Christmas competitions in the coming month.