What is Rasberry Pi? A dessert. Yes, but here we are talking about a new computer that is the size of a credit card. The Rasberry Pi Foundation is a registered educational charity in the UK. This foundation set out to bring awareness to the ever growing industry of computer technology. Their goal is to provide a medium for students, that is both affordable, versatile and a great tool to learn about computer programming and how they can interact with everyday life. Not only is it a great educational medium it will help eliminate the amount of children and students without access to a home computer being they start at about $40.
So how does a computer the size of a credit card teach us about computer programming? This device is not only small, low priced it plugs right into a TV or monitor, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a very capable device that can pretty much do everything your desktop computer can do and has the capability of interacting with the outside world.
The Rasberry Pi is a great way to learn programming languages such as Python and its more forgiving and kid friendly programming language called Scratch. These programming languages allow the device to connect to weather machines, media servers, parent detectors, and even birdhouses with infrared cameras. This entices students to become engaged to learn more about computer programming and hardware.
In conclusion, the Rasberry Pi has great potential to educate students around the world how to program computers to interact with other devices. On a bigger scale there is even now a robotics competition where students have the opportunity to build robots and compete in a competition with other teams in the area. These robots can be built using devices such as the Rasberry Pi. The students are required to navigate the robots through a series of events on the field. In the Pacific Northwest this event is organized by the PNW Robotics. The Rasberry Pi can be found at www.rasberrypi.org, check them out, pick one up and start building a robot, or what ever entices you.
