Welcome...
Recently, I attended Picademy, the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s own training programme for educators. Picademy has just celebrated its third birthday and has taught over 1,000 people in the UK and America to take their first steps into the world of making.
At Picademy you’d expect the Raspberry Pi to be pushed as the answer to every possible solution. Well, it isn’t. Listening to James Robinson, the lead for Picademy in the UK, we learnt that there are other boards on the market, and these boards bring something different to the table. The micro:bit has seen great uptake in schools: it has an immediacy that children crave. I can write my project in Python, JavaScript or PXT and see the results quickly. There’s little or no configuration: the micro:bit appears as a USB flash drive and this means that children can get making quickly!
The Raspberry Pi is a great platform, but there’s a lot to understand. Writing the SD card, learning a few terminal commands, trying out Python… these are all things that some people now take for granted. We’ve since moved on to further projects and problems, and these “trivial” steps are now forgotten. But we should remember that our community is made up of many people with mixed abilities.
But what’s great about the Raspberry Pi Community is how everyone helps each other. Forums, Social Media and blogs are all hubs of information for this popular board.
If you can help the community, then do so! Helping others helps to build on the knowledge that we share.