Raspberry Pi in primary schools

Looking at this story, I wondered if I could buy my godson a Raspberry Pi for his 8th birthday? He’s very bright, and I know he’s a gamer but no idea whether he’s into the programming side, although I could find this out from his Dad…

I’m not IT literate (beyond Windows!) so not sure whether just buying it is enough or whether he’d need help with it too…

In terms of programming, there’s nothing you can do with a Pi that you can’t do with a normal computer.

They are best for electronics projects, like powering robotic boats and stuff, or using for tasks like VPNs, firewalls, media servers etc.

Nothing to do with programming though. They are just computers that happen to be small and cheap.

Alternatively it’s a cheap linux computer he can tinker with all he likes without worrying about breaking it/stuff not working. And it’s a computer that can be “his” not a family one.

I know I’d have appreciated/loved that at 8*. I was certainly coding simple stuff at that age – he’d maybe need a bit of help getting it going.

*i’m an epic geek mind, always have been.

Have a look at http://raspberryjam.org.uk/what-is-raspberryjam/

(Brainchild of an old colleague of mine)

Alternatively it’s a cheap linux computer he can tinker with all he likes without worrying about breaking it/stuff not working

What’s he going to do to a linux laptop that would break it?

I too was ‘coding’ at the age of 8, and this is a great thing, but you don’t need a Pi to do this. If however he hasn’t got access to a computer for enough time to be programming, then consider it a really cheap computer, yes.

What’s he going to do to a linux laptop that would break it?

sudo rm -rf *

And what exactly will sudo rm -rf do?

NB I once did wipe all my father’s code on a System 3 (BBC Micro prototype) by confusing *verify with *format…

Getting an 8 year old interested in programming on Linux should be considered child abuse. What about a football or a bike?

I’ve seen three kids between 9 and 14 been given raspberry pi/arduinos now. What was true for all of them is that it just didn’t work without additional help from someone who was IT literate. Additionally interest died off quickly unless you can make it do something that a PC can’t eg. for Arduino you should really get something like the inventors kit rather than just an arduino but that is way more expensive 🙁

Catapult and ammo I say – way better. If you really want to get a Pi then try and find a good book to go with it

sudo rm -rf *

sudo rm -rf / would be more foolproof I think.

Getting an 8 year old interested in programming on Linux should be considered child abuse. What about a football or a bike?

Why’s that then? Is it because that’s what you did as a kid?

Would have absolutely loved one of these when I was 8! I agree though that little hardware projects are probably the best way to go because as stated otherwise there isn’t anything that can’t be done on any normal computer. Remember the whole point of them was that they’re cheap so every kid in a classroom could have their own computer to work on, it’s not that the Pi does anything special really (without extra hardware).

In our day (ZX81, BBC Micro, etc) computers were new and exciting and printing out “Hello World” in an endless loop was quite cool. Now every kid has digital watches, mobile phones, iPads etc, I’d be surprised if ‘just coding’ will catch on. You need interactive HW to really catch people’s interest or stand out to kids. NB That’s also the feedback from the Raspberry Pi founders.

We’ve just got one at work (secondary school) and its sparked an interest in their use. So far I’ve found central heating controlled by, home lighting, a quad copter, a cycle headlight which projects your current speed onto the floor in front of you (why I know not) and a world of led driven light projects. Oh and three d printers but they’ll never catch on…
For an eight year old it would need input from someone who knows what they’re doing. But I have a feeling they’ll be everywhere when he gets to secondary and he will then be top of his class.

I guess it depends on the kid. Eight year old me would’ve loved the Pi, but then I was just a geeky kid. I was building Lego Technic when half of my class were still being taught not to eat crayons.

The Pi is ‘just’ a cheap computer, but where it wins is the GPIO stuff; with a bit of electronics hackery you can do all sorts of stuff with it. (The eight year old me would have blown the GPIO controller inside of half an hour, but that’s another story.)

BTW,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21882845

I presume you didn’t read the OP, Cougar?

In our local primary school we’ve got Windows XP running on a RPi (I doubt we’re the first to manage that, but possibly the first to get a primary school’s IT system running on one) 🙂

Oh, bobbins. I thought I’d seen it here but searched the page for “BBC” before posting and didn’t find it.

I had an exhibit at a technology show when I was at Secondary School – I wrote some code for a BBC Micro to control a lego robot to write out on a huge sheet of paper whatever phrase you typed in to the computer. Never got a prize or nuffink 🙁

One of these babies, if anyone remembers them:

Best thing to install on a Raspberry Pi for an 8 year old is an application called Scratch. It’s a visual drag and drop coding environment for building games. Buy him the Super Scratch Programming Adventure book to help get him started. My 7 year olds love hacking with code in Scratch as much as playing games.

I think a arduino plus some kit would be a better choice. It is supper easy to learn to program that as long as there is a it literate adult to read though the starting tutorials with him he will be ok to carry on his own. The pi takes a bit more to get up and running.

On the plus side there’s stacks of resources floating around the net for the Pi though. Sounds like a top pressie to me, even if he doesn’t like the techy side he can get some games on it to play about with.

No worry of formatting to be honest, the whole OS lives on the sdcard, you just flash a new image on and you’re off again! To be honest, breaking it a few times just show’s he’s trying, it’s like the falling off analogy 🙂

In our local primary school we’ve got Windows XP running on a RPi

Running inside an emulator/vmware? ARM?

“On the plus side there’s stacks of resources floating around the net for the Pi though”

The aruduio has been around for a lot longer and has loads and loads and loads of info and projects on line and different projects. Not saying the pi is not good, it is, its a powerful full computer but an aruduio let you get going on simple programming and electronics really quick.

It’s a different focus though, there’s a lot more electronics projects on the Aruduio and a lot less games/fun related stuff. Guess it depends which perspective you’re looking at it from, as a games programmer I’d go Pi by a mile 🙂

If he ever made anything fun he could chuck it on the store. Bit of a distant goal, but space invaders or something would get on there.

He’d also need another computer to program an aruduino right?

I think it depends on the kid. Are they interested in knowing how things work, driven to investigate how computers tick?

That was me, but then I’m aware I’m the exception rather than the rule…by the time I was in secondary school I’d say there was one other person (from 200) as interested in tinkering with computers as me…but hey, I now try and make mars rovers smarter for a living which seems like a pretty cool thing to me 🙂

I now try and make mars rovers smarter for a living which seems like a pretty cool thing to me

If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about getting that kinda job? AI and whatnot seems to be a damn hard industry to get into!

“It’s a different focus though, there’s a lot more electronics projects on the Aruduio and a lot less games/fun related stuff. Guess it depends which perspective you’re looking at it from, as a games programmer I’d go Pi by a mile “

It defiantly a personal thing but IMO most kids would be more interested by seeing a little bit of “stuff moving”, if you are going to use the PI for games programming there is no advantage over a normal desktop.

He’d also need another computer to program an aruduino right?

Yes but I’m sure he would have access to one.

I think it depends on the kid. Are they interested in knowing how things work, driven to investigate how computers tick?

True, to be honest again I think to understand how a computer works the aruduino work better here ad the PI has a big o/s as a complicated layer of abstraction. If he gets interested in understanding how a computer works its easy to get down and manipulate registers e.t.c. on the aruduino as its only a 8 bit avr so a nice simple architecture the even someone like me can handle.

Running inside an emulator/vmware? ARM?

VM – though something called OSDVT which is free, rather than wmware. The school IT system already runs from a server using that (with cheapy cast-off old PCs running Fedora as thin clients), so it was just a case of getting the client to run. It’s almost usable for the kids as it is – hopefully it will improve with a bit of tweaking (at the moment the biggest problem is with the sound, which is a known issue on the RPi).

On the Arduino, RPi debate, I think there’s something to be said for both options. The point about needing a separate computer for the Arduino is that the RPi is an all-in-one solution, and it is possible to do stuff more instantly, rather than having to download a program (you can for example control LEDs straight from the command line). To be honest, coming from a background of messing around at an even lower level than Arduino, the thing I appreciate about the RPi is the level of power you have, and the ability to do stuff like sound onboard. It’s also cool if you want to be able to interface straight from hardware to a GUI.

…anyway I’m supposed to be trying to build an older version of Spice client for use with our VM software, rather than messing around on STW!

If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about getting that kinda job? AI and whatnot seems to be a damn hard industry to get into!

A little bit of luck, a little bit of being good at making stuff work/understanding things, and academic excellence always came easy to me. More practically, a habit of going to people working for interesting places and asking for jobs, telling people the job they were looking to fill sounded crap but they did cool work and that was what I wanted to do.

In terms of my background, I’ve got an MEng in computer science, worked for BAE systems in robotics research (see the above about being sure about what you want to do, and not afraid to tell people! The trick is to have the arrogance to believe you can do whatever you want in life if you try. Helps I always had the grades), Then a bursary to do some related research as a summer job during my degree, a PhD In AI, post doc work in human-robot interaction/indoor navigation…

On consideration, I should probably add “hard work” in the mix somewhere….as I sit here after 9 redrafting a journal paper… :-/

Best thing to install on a Raspberry Pi for an 8 year old is an application called Scratch.

That comes as standard on the current Raspbian release – there’s an icon for it on the desktop (I would have replied earlier as I was sure I remembered seeing it, but thought I ought to check when I’d powered up my RPi). So easy to dive straight in.

Man, this thread is geek heaven!

I’ve been trying to work out the justification for getting my 6-year old one of those, think I might just have it now!

There must be something that can be done with a Pi and Lego Mindstorms (also on the geek wish list), right?

something that can be done with a Pi and Lego Mindstorms (also on the geek wish list), right?

I can think of lots of things, but stuff that’s feasible for a 6yo I’m not sure…

If you want the rPi mobile you have to power it somehow, (USB portable battery pack thing maybe?)

Then simple stuff could be e.g. get some TTS software installed on the pi, a little speaker and make something that moves about and speaks? You could write the scripts to do the speaking, the 6yo could “help program the words”?

I keep thinking that these need something like hypercard* – where it’s really easy to pick up and get something going without worrying too much about programming syntax, IDE, compiling etc. Especially if it let you have an easy way to access the GPIO pins and so on.

* great little Mac system 6 development system where the interpretted programming language ‘hypertalk’ was like this:

on mouseDown
ask “Set GPIO 1 to on or off?” with buttons “On” and “Off”
set GPIO1 to result
end mouseDown

on timerTick
set GPIO2 to not GPIO2
end timerTick

If you want the rPi mobile you have to power it somehow

That’s the easy bit. I’m using one of these which you just plug into a suitable battery (a bike light battery would work fine).

I do also have a 6yo, and haven’t tried doing anything with the RPi with him – maybe that’s something I should have a go at (I was busy looking into what it’s reasonable to do with yr 6 kids to try and get something going at school).

I’ve got a Pi which my 10yo girls have ‘played’ Scratch on. Right now it’s running Raspbmc and is a very good media server, but I’m going to get another and have a go at setting up a motion detection system.
I’d also love to try some sort of robot proect but not sure if I’m up to it.
Either way they’re great bits of kit and handy to have around.

I’d also love to try some sort of robot proect but not sure if I’m up to it.

A robot’s just a computer driving some motors, a lot simpler than you think. Looks like there are guides to running ROS on a rPi, I suggest you start there:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROSberryPi/Setting%20up%20ROS%20on%20RaspberryPi

I keep thinking that these need something like hypercard* – where it’s really easy to pick up and get something going without worrying too much about programming syntax, IDE, compiling etc. Especially if it let you have an easy way to access the GPIO pins and so on.

You just described Scratch. Which is installed as default.

It apparently can do IO pins too now

Scratch controlling the GPIO on a RaspberryPi

You just described Scratch. Which is installed as default.

It apparently can do IO pins too now

http://cymplecy.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/scratch-controlling-the-gpio-on-a-raspberrypi/

Cool! I’ve actually got a Pi, but got no further than whacking XBMC on it so far. Will have to check that out.

Has anyone stuck a pi to a quadrocopter yet? I really, really want to make one that can chase my cat around the house.

Looks like there are guides to running ROS on a rPi

What are the advantages to using ROS over just doing robot stuff in Raspbian (where there is plenty of guidance from other people doing stuff)?