Raspberry Pi is a low-cost, flexible and simple computer board that is seeking to be a major name in education as it can be used for a variety of projects and is especially helpful for students when learning programming.
Earlier last year, British start-up Kano claimed research indicated the device was “gathering dust in schools,” being too complex for teachers to implement and therefore for students to use.
But as the tech community continues to grow and technology in education continues to be an expanding and open-minded subject, Raspberry Pi sales have not slowed down and the company even released Rasberry Pi 2 earlier this year. Radar.com has taken a look at a few ways Raspberry Pi has made a mark in the education community and will likely be here to stay.
For one, Raspberry Pi is in charge of an education fund that will provide accepted applicants providing computational education for children with up to 50% of total projected costs for its endeavors.
“Through its match-funding strategy, the Fund finds groups that are dedicated to their cause and helps them reach their goals,” Radar.com said.
And in order to address the issue of teachers finding difficulty in learning how to use the Raspberry Pi device, the company has created Picademy, instruction dedicated to helping teachers learn the technology and bring it back to use in their classrooms with the most efficiency.
“Picademy aims to help… teachers can apply through their website, and 24 are accepted. The two days of instruction are free and held in the company’s Cambridge headquarters. While there, they focus on using Raspberry Pi in the classroom, and assume no prior knowledge,” the article said.
Raspberry Pi also provides nearly two dozen project ideas on its “Maker page,” which capitalizes on the maker movement and gives teachers ideas on where to start to implement project-based learning with the device. It allows for teachers with preliminary interest in the device to get an idea for what it can do and how.
As programming and computational education in general becomes a hot topic in education, devices like Raspberry Pi with a low-cost and expanding influence in the classroom and beyond are likely to be a part of the future.
Read the full article here and check out more about Raspberry Pi here.
[SOURCE- “educationworld.com”]
