Raspberry Pi

[bangaio]

Pah, I give up. But really, I work in a completely bog standard state comp. No special funding, nothing extra however just a clear IT and computing policy. All our computer science software is free, we chuck it at kids but don't forget that computer science is hard and some want instant ps3 games (they are teenagers after all!). Back in the day you could knock up a zx81 game that was half way passable as an off the shelf tape from WHSmith.
You guys are all into your computers which is brilliant but this thing will not in any way get a typical kid into developing their understanding of computers. What they need are teachers who know what they are on about. The whole IT curriculum is swinging back to computer science so who knows how schools will tackle it. I am lucky as my dept is brilliant and we love playing with new things but this ain't going to sell computing, media centre projects, code monkeying or anything like that to the average 11-16 year old. Sorry to be cynical. And getting this into primary school.....

Still going to buy one though.

[averybluemonkey]

You're very dismissive but do little to back up your points, adding ellipses to the end of a sentence doesn't win a debate. As someone who experienced this country's computer science education first hand from the student side not too long ago I can tell you this would have opened up a ton of opportunities for me at various stages of my development. And that was a bog standard state comp, albeit a grammer, but that doesn't grant you any special funding. We had 18 computers for 200 A-Level students and when I was doing GCSEs the graphics design department were still forced to use old Acorns and that was early to mid 2000s.

[averybluemonkey]

Sorry to double post but just to point out one more thing. For good universities A* grades at A-Level are the bare minimum these days as competition is so high. You can be going up against odds of 10:1 or worse with everyone with straight As and a plethora of academic achievements all fighting for the few places available. A device like this makes it possible for students to stand out because it's affordable to use in embedded applications for the final year project. If you've got someone whose done yet another database application going up against one whose embedded one of these in a car with a gps radio and produced some integrated system guess who's going to stand out to the interviewers. You simply couldn't do that before with the ease and low cost that these make available.

[bangaio]

Facts.

CS Degree graduated 2000. A Level Computing 1996, programmed in VB and Pascal (lots of schools still do).

I teach A Level computing, have many students go to read CS or similar at university. I also handle aspects of UCAS applications so I am well aware what universities are looking for. Last year had my first student make it to Oxford to study maths and computing. This year I have several students with offers from Russell group universities to read CS and others from my class for physics, maths and engineering. One former student that I taught in my first year now works for Intel.

I have had students study the EPQ, one programmed an arudino auto gear box/robotics solution and another wrote a complete game in XNA/C.

To explain school funding; the more deprived your school, the more money you have due to the pupil premium. My grammar school I went to in the mid 90s had maybe 50 machine. We are fairly normal and there are schools with way way better and more computing power and schools with less. How a school spends it budget is down to the school, we chose some computers.

Without wishing to sound full of myself, I am a good teacher and am also a head of house and a realist. Many kids are put off not because of a lack of kit but because of the challenge once computing gets tougher than hello world or some simple ifs. They can't see beyond that into applications in real life no matter how good you are. The kids that are into computers and want to play come to our minecraft club, set up their own servers, play around in HTML, make their own programs, have tried out xcode or the android sdk and try to hack the school's servers already.

This year we are running GCSE computing for the first time and re writing out KS3 courses as many schools are following the Wolfe report. We are introducing more CS type study into year 7-9 and we have had to sell GCSE computing as an option. You know what gets most kids really sucked into computing at that age (and I have tried many taster lessons and examples)? Simply getting processing (www.processing.org) to draw some shapes, maybe some interaction with the mouse. They love it. It's free, instant and understandable. You don't need extra USB keyboards and mice and SD cards and a monitor or an HD telly. Any old computer will do. The second thing the kids love (and it is sadly all about the kids) is learning binary, understanding the range of a byte and seeing the number 256 in places. They love it and could convert binary all day long. Thirdly they like ripping apart old broken PCs.

Conversely as I have said understanding computing is hard and while I have on my A Level course kids who find it interesting they simply do not have the logical understanding to solve problems with a computer. Some of this is down to literacy (some can't understand simple pseudo coded algorithms) and in other cases it is a lack of effort because they are at the end of the day teenagers who want to be out trying to crack on to other teenagers at parties rather than programming circuit boards.

Raspberry pi has lots of cool things going for it but it is my firm opinion that from an educational point of view that in most schools it will not add any real benefit to pupils' education and learning, and I would consider myself an optimist with most things. I hope this rant makes sense and I will say again that RPi is cool and I want one but I can get kids sucked into the world of computing, hacking, tinkering and playing with computers quite happily without one.

[Brad]

Great post ^^^^

I'm guessing that at the moment, with the computing gear you have, the results your students see from their programming efforts are limited to what can be displayed on the monitor? (I could easily be wrong on this, my assumption is based on computing labs from about 8 years ago). Like you say, with the right teaching methods you can get some kids really interested (I used to teach C++ at the local college). But, do you not think that there are other kids who might become interested in programming if they were actually programming a car that could detect when it was about to crash into something for example?

[MartyG]

See above - trying to teach everyone to code to the metal isn't the idea.

The analogy I'd suggest here is similar to learning to play a musical instrument. Some people can and some can't - yet nearly everyone at school gets the chance to play an instrument even if it's a recorder, this isn't happening in IT.

[bangaio]

Which is why the government is changing the ICT curriculum - the danger is kids schools will go computing mental and forget kids also need to understand how to use a computer for more mundane things. Most good IT departments are now doing more exciting things. Our year 8 pupils develop games with Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) which is awesome. We trained the other schools in the borough and this is pretty common. There are loads of school using other tools; Alice, Greenfoot and others around the country. Not all schools are good. Some do terms of power point taught by business teachers but the good ones do what they want and make it relevant, interesting and fun. Every year 8 pupil develops their own game and develops a web site to go with it all in a year. The learn algorithm design, object modelling and all sorts of other things, the thing is they just don't call it algorithm design and abject modelling. They are 12-13 after all!

To answer the other post, we have a robot, a turtle and some arduino boards. Scratch lets you buy - next purchase is we hope a couple of 360s to run as XNA development machines. Scratch lets you plug into output boards and lego - http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Sensor_Boards but we haven't checked this out yet..... Give me that board and scratch any day for kids rather than a Raspberry Pi.

I'm still going to get one though*

*I'll keep saying this. It's a cool thing just not cut out for mainstream education.

[Duncan James Waugh]

Wrong thread.

[averybluemonkey]

Facts.

CS Degree graduated 2000. A Level Computing 1996, programmed in VB and Pascal (lots of schools still do).
I teach A Level computing, have many students go to read CS or similar at university. I also handle aspects of UCAS applications so I am well aware what universities are looking for. Last year had my first student make it to Oxford to study maths and computing. This year I have several students with offers from Russell group universities to read CS and others from my class for physics, maths and engineering. One former student that I taught in my first year now works for Intel.

You said categorically that it wouldn't help in education. I, with more recent experience of the education system from the perspective of a student, explained to you that in my schools it would have made a difference to me and my other pupils. I didn't say every school, it appears that it wouldn't at yours, but for many it would. I know for a fact that it would have made a difference in my schools and I know for a fact that it would have made a difference in many of my fellow students schools because we've had discussions about this. And if you really know what the universities want then you know that there's a degree of blind luck as to whether you get lucky at the top universities, every little thing helps throw the balance. But I can tell you from personal experience that at those top universities they would be more impressed by someone hacking together a novel project with Pi than anyone producing some XNA game.

[bangaio]

Oxford interview: discuss various algorithms and explain how to increase their efficiency with a tutor and questions about what programming language you use. Blind luck has nothing to do with it and that's where your limited experience shows. Some would just rather you have an A in maths. It sounds like your school was at the rock bottom end of IT which is a shame but ad I will keep stating sticking this device in schools will not change the world and I think you are failing to understand what education is about. I work with many partner schools and speak tip IT and computing teachers from around the country so I have a very good idea of the national picture rather than you experience of one school and one university. Fair play ut would have helped you but you are into this stuff and your school's IT was rubbish but don't apply your experience to the national picture when you are out if the picture.

[averybluemonkey]

You are making an awful lot of incorrect assumptions about my experience here but I have no desire to compare package sizes with you, PM sent though as it might help your students in future.

[FelixofMars]

I am going to do this (media server), but no it is not a project just load in software... but its what I want to use it for. I might get a second one to tinker more generally with but at this moment its still 2 months away from even shipping.

Some of the 'projects' people say they are going to do make me laugh. The most common being "A media server". That's not a project. That's something it can pretty much do out the gate! I had an idea to take a midi controller keyboard, put an RPi in it with a couple of speakers and a display and having it running soft synths. Hey presto a custom synthesizer.

[MartyG]

You'll be wanting OpenELEC then. Not available to download yet though, but that's a bit moot really, given the latest news is none of initial boards are working properly due to the ethernet socket having its part substituted at the factory

[smouty]

My pi arrived on Monday. Had a little bit of time to look at it yesterday but had problems finding a suitable card and disk image combination.
Eventually got RaspBMC working well on an 8gb microUSB card from Maplins (currently ?6.99).
Raspbmc work amazingly well for a first release. No probs with xvid or mp4 that play OK on 360 at least.

[Brad]

Mine arrive at the weekend too. Put Squeeze on there and have managed to port and run some of our example simulation models we have at work. Nice little board of tricks. Can't comment on graphics or audio or anything as I'm not interested in that.