I have three children at two good but different schools and my wife is a teacher. From observation, they will either be locked in the cupboard because the staff won't know what to do with them or are uninterested or are too lazy to adapt them to the curriculum, or they will be stolen or broken within the week.
This whilst cynical is probably realistic.
The only thing that has ever survived schools is the BBC micro because they weren't cool, were indestructible and you could screw them down.
Definitely realistic. During Y11 I had a fantastic I.T teacher who genuinely cared about technology, at some point the I.T department acquired a couple of LEGO Mindstorms[1]. They were only allowed to be used after school because if they'd been out in the classroom with the "normal" students (those that didn't care about technology) they would have been destroyed. The only reason we (the students that enjoyed technology) got any value out of them was because the I.T teacher put his free time towards teaching us about them and supervising our usage.
He was the only teacher that had a clue about technology and they would have been destroyed or rotted in the cupboard if it weren't for him. Hopefully with the rise of technology in recent years teachers are getting better, the teachers I had (aside from the aforementioned good teacher) were all teaching since the early 90s and I'm pretty sure their qualifications were "has the ability to type" which put them ahead of the pack back then, but now they can't even come close to knowing what a hobbyist 15 year old programmer knows.
That good teacher left the same year I did (he went to Switzerland because apparently they don't have a hard-on for following the shit curriculum there), I wonder if the Mindstorms ever left the cupboard after he did.
I'm more optimistical, and and I hope that will be realistic.
First, the Pis will be given to individual students, not school staff. This means that they won't be locked in the cupboard between yearly "look at a computer" classes, but can be taken home by the kids to tinker with.
Second, the entire point of the Raspberry Pi project is to make a computer so cheap that nobody cares if they are broken now and then.
Broken computers are not actually the most important problem. It's worse to lock down computers in hardware boxes and software restrictions so that the students can't experiment for themselves. On a normal school or home computer, the adults will forbid any sort of tinkering, because the expensive/important computer might break. If the Raspberry Pi software gets messed up, you insert a new SDCard. If the hardware gets broken, it's just $35. Hopefully this will make the teachers and parents think that the Pis are just toys, and allow kids to break them.
I have been sceptical about the educational part of the Pi since they literally said it. For a small set of kids who are already interested, yeah, great little toy. But if they think this will revolutionise computing and electronic education, I think that if serious, they will be disappointed.
Like you say, who is going to teach. Thats a problem in the best of times, but given the cuts and general low moral of teachers, I dont see it. Next, I simply dont see the imagination there. On top of that, they look easy to break. But above all, given that all schools have PC, what's the point, unless some how the school gets in to clever things a Pi could control. The idea that the average school will have kids building demo clusters is , well, amusing.
I really like the Pi, and see many many great uses for it. It is a brilliant thing. But this mass education claim looks to me like Pi in the sky.
Should add, I would love to turn out to be completely wrong.
It says: "We are going ... to find the kids who we think will benefit from having their very own Raspberry Pi" So at least it's not going to end up locked in cupboards.
Awesome idea! A raspberry pi case which screws down to the table top, has some LEDs connected to the GPIO pins behind a polycarbonate cover. A power/reset button, and HDMI and SD connectors on the "outside" of the case. Lab supplies are one SD Card. When its time to use them, out come the monitor and wireless keyboards, when your done, those get locked up leaving just the 'bumps' on the table that are the RPis.
Seconded, but with circuitry like the "ruggeduino" folks have built into their take on arduino.
I'm using ruggeduinos to teach an into to robotics class right now and I'm counting the wiring errors I discover that would have cost an UNO on a little tally sheet as we go.
This simple circuitry has saved just over $400 in just a few weeks.
What mystifies me is back in the 80s there was a relatively successful amount of programming at school using mainly Logo but also BBC Basic (which doesn't suck nearly as much as other basics). The real tragedy is Logo fell out of favour so quickly for no particular reason.
at high school we got taught CECIL and basic and touched upon a the other languages and there feild of usage. Also taught the history part as well. Had a 380z research machine, BBC micro in the final year and also access to a 2903 ICL mainframe running george over a 300buad acoustic coupler and then would take upto an hour to get a good connection. Sometime later computer studies got turned into a secratary skills on a computer and called ICT.
Logo was great and in some way we still have it at toy level with the various programable toys via mobile phones and let us not forget we still have bigtrax. Though Lego are doing things now we could only dream of as children. Computer back then also came with a programming language interface, nowadays that is a optional extra sadly and is akin to a generation knowing how to drive and how a engine worked so they could identify a fault and fix it to those that can just drive.
Yip they were well built. Apparently if you entered the front panel (ctrl+F iirc you got a hex debugger) you could single step thru the machine code, now if your did that for the graphic panel part you could blow the screen -- luckily this did not get learned from expereience.
Well logo didn't really have much potential other than for drawing stuff with a turtle. This wasn't because it wasn't capable of glorious things (which it was) but more that it was hard for the staff to understand compared to BBC BASIC.
I had recently visited an elementary school (private) where they were actively using 3D printers and Arduino boards.
That said, they are certainly not the common case, and I fear that your cynicism is well-placed.
What might be better for many such schools is to give the boards as a reward to the "top science" or "top math" student for a given grade level. I suspect it would get a lot more use.
Best chance I think it has in education is in small after school clubs for those interested. But its always going to need a decent teacher to lead it. Well, maybe not a teacher but knowledgeable parent?
One of the organisations mentioned is Code Club[1], who do exactly that - they run small after school clubs, with volunteer programmers running them (and with a teacher to monitor the kids). One of the founders, Linda Sandvik, spoke at HN London a couple of months ago.
They're always looking for volunteers, so anyone here with some technical knowledge who would like to help kids learn computer engineering, give them a look!
Sounds like a good school! Good to hear, even if it is private. My comment only stands for state schools. State school usually have swathes of kit (mine had CNC lathes, mills and other nice stuff) but it is never used other than to show off at parents evenings.
As an ex-top math and top science student, we probably already would have one. Back in my day I had the equivalent - a BBC master, a Casio FX-7000G and a well stocked cupboard of desoldered electronic components :)
Oh, I don't know. I know had my school had these when I was in highschool we would have gotten good mileage out of them in several of our school-sponsored science clubs. Certainly Science Olympiad, and likely our rocketry club as well.
I work in education as well, FE. Yes, the stock will need to be managed and support given to get them actually used.
(I also have fond memories of Acorn Archimedes A310s which were also pretty solid.)
Having said that, we had a couple of class sets of netbooks (Asus 7 inch ones) that lasted well and were really used for independent study/class work using wifi. And they all came back each day.
I had a luxury to be in age when children encountering problem dealing with computer resolved to violence smashing keyboard, mouse or kicking stationary hardware. It is like kicking old car to start it up, it always works.
I had the misfortune of smashing an Acorn A310 keyboard on the table at school resulting in most of the keytops falling off. My punishment was served: put the keys back on in the right order with no hints.
Zen-like experience that. I now show respect for the machine (unless it's a Dell).
That can be mitigated by repealing child labor laws. 12 years in a govt building + no jobs = more boredom = increase demand for beer/robbery/pregnancies.
I had the pleasure of meeting Eben when he spoke at HN London last year. His passion is blatant and powerful and he's comfortably one of the most down to earth people you could wish to meet and has a brilliant sense of humour. The fact that he turned up wearing a HAL 9000 t-shirt cemented the fact that he's a true geek who is doing something he absolutely loves every single day.
If you ever get an opportunity to see him speak then I suggest you jump at the chance.
The government are quite happily coughing up £35bn of tax of our cash to "fight terrorism", yet are quite happily throwing only £32bn of tax at education.
I'd rather Google gave all their money directly in schemes like this than had it divvied up into the warmongers chests and pissed into running itself.
A cynical person would note that the UK government isn't upset that the loopholes are being used, since they've made no serious attempts to close them. They're upset that the loopholes are being used by the wrong companies.
If Apple or Google or Starbucks spent as much on UK lobbying as other multinationals, I doubt they'd be receiving any negative press.
HMRC change rules all the time to beat tax avoidance. They're hamstrung somewhat by European regulations that prevent them from penalising companies for hiding their profits in other EU countries. But it's a cat and mouse affair and the HMRC can only be reactive unless someone comes up with a perfect tax code.
>They're upset that the loopholes are being used by the wrong companies. //
You mean the richest, most successful, most popular, most used by the UK population and most profitable?
>I doubt they'd be receiving any negative press. //
So in your opinion the UK press is in the pocket of the government who're only highlighting morally questionable tax avoidance as part of a shake down to boost some sort of protection racket? That's what it sounds like you're saying.
Personally I think the answer lies in some sort of underpin based on gross revenue levied on all companies over the VAT registration threshold but with the option to apply to have the underpin removed if one can prove in good faith that the underpin is onerous.
Amazon could still pretend they're working out of Luxembourg (500 workers) instead of UK (15k workers) but they'd pay on their revenue anyway. That way Amazon can't put UK tax paying firms out of business (simply by undercutting and relying on the extra profit from not paying tax to stay a float) and then off-shore all the taxable profits leaving us with no UK tax paying businesses (but even more consumption).
Just think of all the high wage bills for accountants that could be saved.
> You mean the richest, most successful, most popular,
> most used by the UK population and most profitable?
I mean young companies that don't contribute as much to election campaigns as older companies.
> So in your opinion the UK press is in the pocket of the
> government who're only highlighting morally
> questionable tax avoidance as part of a shake down to
> boost some sort of protection racket? That's what it
> sounds like you're saying.
I'm not saying that the UK press is an organ of the government. Rather, individual members of the government are complaining only about companies that do not give them (sufficient?) kickbacks. The press merely reports on these complaints, because true investigative journalism is rapidly dying out.
The obvious solution is to close the "pick any EU nation to pay taxes in" loophole so companies are required to allocate taxes based in part on the geographical source of their revenue, but this would affect the companies that paid for those loopholes in the first place, so it will not soon happen.
If the government were actually interested in punishing companies that pay taxes to Ireland for profits in the UK, they would have just done it instead of kick up a flurry of press releases.
Google pay little to no corporation tax on profits in the UK (because they ship all of the profits overseas where Corporation tax isn't so expensive).
But Google employ lots of people in the UK so they do contribute a non-insignificant amount to the UK treasury in the way of taxes related to employees (PAYE/CGT on share option grants, NI, etc).
They do the former because they can, the do the latter because they must.
I love Sean Lock's comment on 8 out of 10 cats, comparing tax evasion with farting in an elevator. Sure, it's not legal ... (link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAcjntGQuCU)
I have a feeling the first question will be "why couldn't they give us an xbox instead?"
It will be interesting to see how these are used in schools though. When I was in school the ethos around IT and computers was very much "don't do anything we haven't asked you to do" which seems to be the opposite of how the pi is intended to be used.
It's still like that. Everything is locked down, locked up and entirely filtered. It's like a computing prison. A couple of years ago, my then 8 year old daughter (!!!!) was actually told off for using the Run dialog (to fire up notepad) in Windows XP because they removed it from the start menu and was accused of hacking! I literally fucking exploded like a WWII bomb at the clueless peon who made that accusation.
I'm now a school governor to make sure that these morons don't take over the planet.
The kill pretty much every bit of interest there is straight away for most students.
"I literally fucking exploded like a WWII bomb at the clueless peon who made that accusation."
I'd watch the blood pressure there (I've been teaching for 24 years).
As you are now on the management: Is there (safe, filtered) Internet via wifi and BYOD for the older pupils? Cheap android tablets for shiny media but also hackable? Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) on the PCs? Basically what policy innovation/leadership have you contributed?
Not challenging here, I'd really be interested to know. Having documented examples to point at really helps in situations where you have to be diplomatic with idiots.
Changes so far: stopped mass iPad purchase to use as cameras (!?), different acceptable use policy (which stops people being hung without good reason), open systems policy I.e. no single vendor, fired RM PLC, halfed expenditure on consultants, new smartboards which don't fall over every 3 months, got rid of LGFL Fronter, two new IT staff.
That's very impressive. Although this doesn't effect me directly, I'd like to say thank you for your efforts. I was personally let down by secondary school technology education in the UK. I ended up with a D for GCSE IT, even though I'd been programming on my BBC Micro at home from the age of 10. Luckily I had a decent teacher at tertiary college and ended up with an A at A level.
So it's great to see somebody put their knowledge to use and to hopefully create a better environment for kids to learn and be inspired.
Moodle+exchange (still cheaper than fronter which was £40k+. MS will bend over for educational contracts. Exchange supports the staff better as well. Smoothwall guardian filter
Would be interested to learn more about your involvement - the school, how you pushed for the changes, why these things are being managed at school level ...?
I'll write it all up and post it to HN shortly (will check with other members that they are happy to publicise it first). Its an academy school so they are more flexible and have 3rd party funding. Basically, the governers have a greater stake in the school.
Do you have a financial stake in the company (ie school) then. Does it trouble you in any way that your volunteer effort is going to someone else's profit instead of entirely to the children of the school?
I must have it wrong, whilst I understood the schools could be non-profits in a limited sense (though wages of course can be inflated to extract funds) I had it that 3rd party investors were capable of extract a profit from their lending and other involvement.
If there are no profits to make, how do you convince companies to get involved; most companies don't appear to be so altruistic.
Budget was already available, just misplaced to be honest. I'm sure the state managed predecessors were getting backhanders.
The stupid thing is they did a fund raiser for to fix a hole in the roof!? (£300 cost) and built raised vegetable beds for the students at a cost of £1500 which were never filled and are used for storing games equipment under tarp.
I personally would be interested in your (collective) big ideas about how IT can support and enhance learning. The strategy thing. With as much detail as your colleagues and sponsors feel could be released. A good write up of that would work wonders for the UK perception of the Academy programme in general and your school in particular. Especially if you include staff development and mentoring in that.
Sounds good so far. Good luck with it all. I hope they get their (sensibly priced) cameras (and perhaps a few sound recorders). And Scratch (I teach Maths)
I could certainly tell plenty of stories of our exploits (literally and figuratively) with the RM branded computers that our school used.
The focus from what I remember was very much on the "computers as tools for business" angle. Databases were taught by designing forms in MS Access, not a single line of SQL.
It might be interesting to see how they use the pies though, hopefully they will assign them to students individually and let them change the Window manager/install quake3/install nmap to their hearts content.
> The kill pretty much every bit of interest there is straight away for most students.
What's your opinion of the new CS curriculum they are talking about introducing. From what I've read of it[1], it seems a big improvement over the old "learn to use MS Word and Excel".
I have seen various curriculum proposals, but the main problem is between the department of education and teaching unions. Teachers who can teach that curriculum are just not available. This threatens the teachers who clam up and whinge at the unions, who then moan at the department of education who back down and the cycle begins again. This is entirely self-destructive.
Remove the unions and hire ex industry people on a good salary with training and things will get better, but the current teaching standards across the board is just incompetent dross (bar about 5%). Teaching is not a profession at the moment. It is simply an easy career path for certain types of personality.
I include my wife in that statement as well and she would agree (she is an art teacher and there is very little space for her in society as a traditional creative person).
So summary: great idea, lacking any likelyhood of being executed unless they destroy the unions and hire better people.
In my university, the computers are locked down so much that literally you cannot lock the screen. Which means when you get up to go to the printer or run to the bathroom, there is no way to protect what is on your screen short of logging out completely. The IT director for the school saw nothing wrong with this.
Same a children, when he does something out of curiosity and you tell him "this is bad, do not do", he learns that do not do that in front of you or tell petty lie.
That actually made me laugh because it's exactly what I'd probably do with it (or install RISCOS and play Zarch). At the same time, in the process, I'd have to get over a learning curve so perhaps that's not a bad thing.
Unfortunately this seems like a drop in the ocean to me.
In January 2010 there were 24,605 schools in England alone [1]. Add more for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Then subtract the fairly small number of private schools. My guess is that that about 1 in 3 of UK schools will see even one Pi. And then, since the Pis are being given to pupils not the school, they have to identify the lucky pupil who gets to take it home. I wonder how that will work?
I'm not trying to be cynical, but is this actually meant to achieve anything that is related to education?
I don't know the full plan, but it makes perfect sense to start with a more reasonable number as an experiment; if it works, it'll be much easier to raise funding for the rest of the country. Even Google can't be expected to donate millions of $ (or £) straight up for something in it's infancy.
Just because it does not single-handedly fix computing education does not mean it is worthless - to make such an inference is a fallacy (I forget which one; there's a particular name. Essentially the-perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good). Helping 15000 people is better than helping 0.
At the end of the day, even the ocean is still made of nothing but drops.
I agree that helping 15000 people is better than helping none. My cynicism relates to how the Pis are to be distributed and what can be learned about whether this works in any educationally meaningful sense. If this is an experiment and the [geekiest|nicest|poorest] kid in a school gets a Pi to take home, how do you evaluate the educational outcome?
This announcement also exists within a political context (corporate tax avoidance), and occurred on the same day that Eric Schmidt made public comments about Google not being opposed to a more restrictive corporate tax regime in the UK. If it is a PR move then I don't have much confidence that there will be any follow-through aimed at achieving genuine educational improvements. To do this requires infrastructure and ongoing commitment.
For the record, I have three Pis and I think they are wonderful. My children are going to be using them at home soon and if they had access to them in school too then I would be very pleased.
I'm sure that there is a non-zero amount of PR to this, but Eric Schmidt gave a talk[1] in Edinburgh in August of 2011 where he specifically addressed shortcomings in UK IT education, so this has clearly been an issue for him before the current tax-avoidance story hit headlines.
I think the idea is to encourage more kids to take up computing (as opposed to ICT). To that end giving them to kids who're already doing A-level computing seems misguided?
I have three children at two good but different schools and my wife is a teacher. From observation, they will either be locked in the cupboard because the staff won't know what to do with them or are uninterested or are too lazy to adapt them to the curriculum, or they will be stolen or broken within the week.
This whilst cynical is probably realistic.
The only thing that has ever survived schools is the BBC micro because they weren't cool, were indestructible and you could screw them down.