It’s always interesting when a new publication comes on the scene. Linux Voice is particularly interesting not only because it was crowdfunded, but also because of the amount of experience and writing talent behind it. Alex Eames has written a short review of the first issue and you can read it here.
Matt Manning continues his series on simple GPIO interaction with this video showing how to wire up and program a buzzer with Python.
Fred Sonnenwald has been experimenting with Tom Hartley’s AirPi and has written an excellent article on how to interpret the readings you get from the various different sensors. It’s quite a mathematical article, but he goes very in-depth on it.
With this week’s Manchester Jamboree and next May’s Cambridge Raspberry Jam both focussing on the Raspberry Pi’s potential within education, I have invited Nevil Hunt from Innovations in Education to write for me a weekly series of blog posts describing his experience of nearly 2 years running Raspberry Pi Workshops in schools in Berkshire and Oxfordshire with his Python Programming Challenge called “Seven Segments of Pi”. The Blog post will start this week, the week of the Jamboree, where Nevil will be exhibiting the “Seven Segments of Pi”, and run until the week of the next CamJam (May 10th) where he will be doing a talk also entitled “Seven Segments of Pi in the Classroom”.
Mike
I’d like to thank Mike for inviting me to write this series of blog posts. The Raspberry Pi has such potential for teaching programming, we just need to come up with ways of using it to inspire the next generation of software engineers…but there are many trips-and-traps acting as barriers for schools looking to use Raspberry Pis in the classroom. In this series, I will share my experiences of running Raspberry Pi workshops in schools and hopefully help prevent other people falling into the same traps as I did! I will also try to describe what I think “worked” and what did not when trying to engage and inspire the interest of the pupils.
My first post is all about my first school visits in the weeks immediately after I received my first Raspberry Pi, and I am going to call it…
“Yes! …but what does it do!?”
It was 29th February 2012 at 5:50 a.m. and the alarm went off!
I’m not normally up at this time but I knew my creaking old Windows PC would need up to 10 minutes to boot up so that I could order my first Raspberry Pi! So, at 5.58 a.m. I had two Internet Explorer windows open, one on the Farnell Web Site and one on the R.S. Web Site. It was being sold by both and I didn’t mind who I bought it from! There then followed an hour and 55 minutes of browser refreshing trying to place my order, but with no success. So I went for Plan ‘B’. Farnell were due to start taking telephone orders from 8 a.m. So, from 7:58 a.m. I phoned the Farnell Sales Order line and I kept hitting phone ‘redial’. Finally, at 8:20 a.m. I got through and placed an order for my first Raspberry Pi.
Then came a slight delay! The Raspberry Pi needed to pass some “EMC” tests before they could be shipped. These tests check it doesn’t interfere with our enjoyment of Radio 1 or corrupt that vital text message! I am an Electronic Engineer myself, so I know the “joys” of EMC Testing!
Finally, on Saturday 12th May 2012, my first Raspberry Pi dropped through the letter box! A quick trip to Maplins to buy a power supply and an HDMI cable along with downloading the ‘Debian’ software onto an SD Card and by lunchtime I was up-and-running!
My interest in the Raspberry Pi has always been about its potential within education. I have been a STEM Ambassador for over 10 years, running Science Clubs, Construction Activity Days and Initiative Challenge Days. But like Eben Upton, I saw how children were being “turned off” computing by making them believe computing was all about Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides! Then along came the Raspberry Pi and I decided it was an opportunity for me to use it to promote software and electronics in schools.
I had several schools lined up for an “Introduction to the Raspberry Pi” talk. (With only one Raspberry Pi it was difficult to do much more!) And at one school while I was enthusiastically talking about USB ports, HDMI connectors and SD cards I remember clearly there was one boy who kept putting his hand up repeatedly asking:
“Yes! …but what does it do!?”
The same is true for the Raspberry Pi. I knew what it could do. But that pupil didn’t know…unless, of course, I were to come up with something so he could see what it could do!
I talked to people at work and asked how they got started writing software, and one guy, who is one of the best software engineers I’ve worked with, said at school in the 1980’s someone showed him he could connect an LED
to the back of the school’s BBC Micro
and control it by software!
And the LED came on!
He said from that moment he was hooked!
So I thought, yes, LEDs. Everyone likes flashing lights! Then another software engineer suggested connecting up a Seven Segment LED Display.
And so the Seven Segments of Pi was born!
Next week I will talk about some of the technical barriers to using the Raspberry Pi in the classroom in a Blog entitled
”Yes! …but all our monitors are VGA!”
If you are interested in learning more about the Seven Segments of Pi visit my Web Site www.SevenSegmentsOfPi.com or watch the “Seven Segments of Pi” YouTube Video. You can also watch Carrie Anne Philbin playing “Figure Eight My Pi” at the CamJam, courtesy of Alex at RasPi.TV.
Nevil
At the December CamJam, I was lucky enough to buy a copy of Adventures in Raspberry Pi, the new book by Carrie Anne Philbin, award-winning teacher and now Education Pioneer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I’ve taken some time to have a read through it, so here comes the review.
The book takes you from putting your Pi set-up together for the first time, through programming concepts and finally to a full electronics project. It starts with a brief, but vital, explanation of how the book is written. This includes describing how the book is laid out, with examples of the different break-out boxes, and a guide to what you can expect to learn. It also introduces the concept of reward ‘badges’ that you earn on your “adventure” through the world of Pi. The idea of taking an ‘adventure’ is obviously aimed at kids, which is great, because that is the intended audience (although frankly what full-grown adult doesn’t enjoy going on an adventure!?)
Soon enough, the book introduces you to the world of the Scratch visual programming environment and progresses through simple exercises designed to help you learn as you go, including a rather nifty RPG game. As you enter chapter adventure 4, the author uses Turtle programming to explain how you can transfer your knowledge from Scratch into the text-based programming language Python. Chapter 5 moves over to Python completely and it’s here that things start to get a bit more complicated as concepts like conditions and loops are introduced and expanded upon.
There is an entire chapter on Sonic Pi, which is a simple programming language to produce sounds with the Pi. Using the programming concepts you’ve learned, you can create your own musical compositions. Sonic Pi is a great way of showing that programming concepts are transferable and this is an extremely valuable, not to mention fun, chapter.
The remaining chapters introduce the GPIO pins and take you from a rather fun exercise involving a marshmallow through to creating a full-fledged jukebox on a breadboard. The learning curve here is pretty steep, but the author explains everything clearly and there are plenty of summaries and glossaries to explain the terms you will encounter. One thing I was particularly impressed with was the clarity of the warnings about plugging wires into your Pi. Full credit, though, to the author that she covers this in a book written for kids as I think other books wouldn’t have gone near the GPIO with a long wire. Only by exploring the GPIO pins can people understand the power of the Pi and it’s great that there’s a beginners book that takes you this far into your exploration.
At the back of the book is a comprehensive glossary of the technical terms you’ve encountered and a select list of links to further resources. The author could have listed many more links here, but the ones she has chosen are very good and by sticking to just a few she can highlight the best.
So, in conclusion all I can say is that the book is blessed with an easy-going, but ultra-clear, style of writing. Carrie Anne Philbin has created a beautiful book that deserves a place on any Pi owners bookshelf.
There’s only one score I can give to this book: 10/10
Buy the book from Wiley (the publishers), the Raspberry Pi Foundation Swag Store or from Amazon.
TinyCore is a minimal Linux distro that gives you only what you need to boot and enter a graphical user interface. Linux User and Developer magazine has done a review of the Pi version (piCore) and you can read it here. You can download the distro from DistroWatch here.
