Raspberry Pi news

LOCKDOWN! The Pi Foundation outlines how it’s dealing with events and its store now that Covid-19 is here.

The success of the Raspberry Pi has been how it disrupted the status quo. Back in 2012, if you wanted to buy a small Linux computer with added GPIO then at a consumer level you were stuck with a cheap Atom CPU device and an Arduino. At a professional or industrial level you could buy small computers to do that for around $150. But in February 2012 a $35 computer came out that ran Debian and had access to a GPIO.

The disruption didn’t end there. Soon the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched its teacher training scheme – Picademy – of which I was a member until 2017. The Picademy course was two days of training for teachers eager to learn how to use the Raspberry Pi in class. But it wasn’t just about the Raspberry Pi. The Arduino, micro:bit, Codebug and other boards featured as part of the course, enriching the learning of the teachers attending Picademy.

The disruption didn’t end there. Now those teachers are forming their own networks to share computing skills and help enrich the learning of their students. Then those children show their friends and family, write blog posts and record tutorial videos to share their skills.

The disruption is a wave touching every facet of our community and as with every wave, it gets bigger with more energy! So do your bit to help others to learn! Show a class how to write Python code, write a blog post on BASH, record a video to demonstrate a new idea realised with the humble Raspberry Pi.