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Raspberry Pi in Education Newsletter - Issue 22 - January 2017
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Raspberry Pi in Education
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2017. We are busy preparing for Bett Show 2017, where we'll be taking over part of the STEAM village to provide talks, workshops, and panels. Our CEO Philip Colligan will also be launching an exciting, new, free initiative to support educators, live in the Bett Show Arena on Wednesday 25 January, so keep your eyes peeled for breaking news on our social media.
We're really looking forward to meeting you face-to-face to hear about the different ways you implement digital making and project-based learning in your own classrooms. Visit our stand (G460) to find out how to get involved with our programmes and sign up for our workshops.
Happy trails!
The Raspberry Pi Foundation
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Join us for a celebration of computing education at this year's Bett Show
January has come round again and with it another opportunity for educators to visit the Raspberry Pi Foundation at Bett Show 2017, the annual EdTech event in London. We'll be at the ExCel London from 25-28 January, and have scheduled 50+ workshops and talks to run over the four days. Whether you’re a school teacher or a community educator, there’s something for everyone. Visit our stand (G460) to discover ways to bring the power of digital making to your classroom and beyond.
Read our recent blog post for an overview of our activities.
P.S. Entry to the Bett Show is free. There's still time to register for a ticket and come along.
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Announcing our 2017 schedule for Picademy
Happy new year to everyone! We’re back with a new programme of Picademy events for 2017. All our events for 2017 have now been scheduled, so you can look ahead and choose something at a location/date that is convenient.
For the uninitiated, Picademy is a free CPD programme that aims to give teachers the skills and knowledge they need to get creative with computing, no matter what their level of experience. In fact, you don’t need any previous experience to apply, just an enthusiasm for teaching kids computing. Each course lasts for two full days and is a mixture of digital making workshops, project-based learning, and hacking. Delegates graduate as Raspberry Pi Certified Educators (RCEs).
Click the button below to start your application.
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Have you signed up for our free online training?
In December, we announced a new way for people to learn about digital making: two free online training courses, available anywhere in the world. The courses will run alongside our current live educator training offerings (Picademy and Skycademy) and are facilitated by FutureLearn, a leading platform for online educational training. Sign-ups are already open and the response has been overwhelming, with thousands of people signing up for the courses that start on 20 February. Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far. If you haven't yet signed up, click on the button below for more details.
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The first Pioneers challenge: Make us laugh
We’re looking for Pioneers (aged between 12 and 15) to use technology to make awesome things. We’d like you to get together in a team, make a thing, and share it online.
We’re setting you a challenge to inspire you to get creative with technology. Your challenge? Make us laugh! This is not a joke. We’d like you to come up with a hilariously genius prank that involves some kind of technology to make it happen.
To find out more, click the GIF above to watch the challenge announcement video. Everyone who takes part will get kudos and respect. The most impressive, interesting, and ingenious makes will win money-can’t-buy prizes and cool swag.There are so many different ways of being the best here: we’re looking for most creative, most ingenious, most brave, most bonkers, and so on.
You can find out lots more information about the programme at raspberrypi.org/pioneers, including projects to inspire you and the information you'll need to submit by the March 2017 deadline.
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Astro Pi project update
Congratulations to those of you who made it into phase two of the Europe-wide Astro Pi competition. Over 350 teams, representing 15 countries, will compete to send their software to the International Space Station. Please note that you will only be judged against teams from your own country. Your free kit like the one above should arrive in the post any day now. It contains everything you need to program software for the ISS: a Raspberry Pi 3B, a Sense HAT, both types of Camera Module, a power supply, and all the fixtures and fittings to optionally build your own Astro Pi flight case. If you want to 3D print the case, then get access to a 3D printer and follow the instructions here. Please note that the case design has changed to make it possible to do the build without using glue or solder, making it easier and more accessible to younger students. Please share pictures of your completed Astro Pi cases like this one!
The submission form for your code will be on the Astro Pi website on the 27th of January, and the deadline for submissions is 28 February. For those of you who didn't participate this time, don't worry! There will be new Astro Pi competitions involving other ESA astronauts in the future. Watch this space!
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The Jam is flowing in January and February
Raspberry Jams are events organised by the community for people to share knowledge, learn new things, and meet other Pi enthusiasts. They’re a great way to find out more about the Raspberry Pi and what you can do with it, and to find like-minded people.
There are plenty of Jams coming up in the next couple of months! See if there’s something near you.
To book a place, click on your chosen event in the calendar on the Raspberry Jam page.
UK:
- Sat 21 Jan - Huddersfield Raspberry Jam
- Sat 21 Jan - Hull Raspberry Jam
- Sat 22 Jan - Egham Raspberry Jam
- Sat 28 Jan - Cotswold Jam
- Wed 01 Feb - Leeds Raspberry Jam
- Thur 02 Feb - Twickenham Coding Evening
- Sat 11 Feb - East London Raspberry Jam
- Sat 18 Feb - Leamington Library Raspberry Jam
If there’s nothing near you, and you want to set something up, contact Ben Nuttall on b...@raspberrypi.org for support.
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Weather Station project update
Over 850 Weather Stations have shipped around the world, and data is being collected from all corners of the globe! Our Weather Station programme uses an Oracle database to store the data recorded by participating schools. We recently teamed up with a UK Oracle database development company, Explorer, to make some improvements to the interface. The launch of this is soon approaching!
Only schools participating in the Weather Station programme are able to access the database, but anyone who is interested can still use the data that's being recorded. So, unless you have one of our 1000 kits, there's no need to sign up: you can see all of the good stuff through the resources below.
The data is being recorded, quite literally, all around the world. We had a little look at some of the weather in December and here’s some examples of what we found:
Wind gust speed in New Zealand: 3.36 km/h
Ambient temperature in Ireland: 8.24 degrees Celsius
Ground temperature in Thailand: 18.3 degrees Celsius
Try our learning resource, Fetching the weather, to access data from all Raspberry Pi Weather Stations on the Oracle database.
We're in the process of creating a whole library of Weather Station resources which incorporate both Java and Python languages. Some will focus on individual sensors, so the resources can be used by those who don't have a full Weather Station kit. Learning resources galore! Stay tuned for their release.
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Learn how to use Scratch 2.0 in Chromium (the new browser in Raspbian) on a Raspberry Pi.
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Access our Weather Station database, and turn the data into graphs, in our Graphing the weather resource.
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Ever wanted to create your own Lolcats? Our new JavaScript resource will give you purrrrfect results every time.
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