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Raspberry Pi Arrives, With a School Debut In Leeds
hypnosec writes "It seems fitting that the first batch of Raspberry Pi computers landed in the UK in the hands of school children based in Leeds as what many consider as another wave of grass-root computing revolution, another BBC Micro 2.0, begins. The Raspberry Pi has been designed from scratch to get anyone interested in computer programming to do so without forking out much; the base unit can connect to a television like the Commodore C64 or the Sinclair ZX81. According to the BBC, the first batch has been presented [Friday] by Eben Upton, the school project coordinator, in an event held at the Leeds offices of Premier Farnell, one of the official PI distributors."
This is also a great way/price for people to get into building and operating clusters. I plan on dropped 200 and building a 8 system cluster, just for fun.
Lied about import duty? One of the most interesting things about this whole process has been how upfront and transparent they've been. When they discover some new roadblock or detail that they weren't aware of (such as the status of the Pi wrt import duties, or the requirement for CE testing), they've been quick to post to their blog and tell the world about it.
As for "and market them badly"... really? How much do you suppose they've spent on marketing, exactly? Are you aware of how much publicity they're getting, worldwide, for free? Even my local newspaper, which is absolutely dreadful for tech news, has carried very positive (and nearly accurate!) stories on the Raspberry Pi. Seems to me that, if there's one thing they've done extremely well, it's creating a huge buzz around their concept, WITHOUT blowing a huge pile on marketing.
You're absolutely right! The Raspberry Pi foundation is interested in a lot more than simply making a (very cool) machine available. The general thought is that a lot of parents are anxious about the notion of allowing their children to experiment on an expensive home PC (being able to experiment with root access, while not mandatory to learn to program, is useful to get to understand how the computer works) - that's part of the reason why the foundation developed the computer. The foundation is also working to create a library of educational materials that are intended to help children learn to program and find out about their machine, as well as promote and encourage changes to the teaching of IT/Computing/Computer Science.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
The thing you might not have taken into account is the actual experience of the teacher who would like to introduce students to programming. I have no experience with the British school system, but I did work for IT in a K-12 U.S. school system not too long ago, so I think I have something to say about this.
Where I worked, students' computers were heavily locked down Windows machines running a restricted set of software. Because of the machines' age, the bad third-party GPO-wannabe software that the school district used to manage the systems, and various virus infections, these computers were not the friendliest things to teachers and students – and both groups were perpetually scared to death of "messing up" the computers and getting in trouble. In reality, these PCs were used primarily as overcomplicated interfaces to various bits of flash- and web-based educational software, and anything else was deemed too troublesome.
The point is that between the technical deficiencies and the bureaucratic ones, getting school IT to allow students to run a new type of program and then support it can frankly be a nightmare. You say these computers are capable of running Python, and this is true in the strictest sense, but in reality it's just not going to happen when half of the admins don't even know what Python is, and the other half are too scared of deploying a new, "nonstandard" interpreter.
And if that's how IT feels about the prospect, just think of how frightening it looks to the teachers.
Now contrast that with using something like the Raspberry PI. You can program without messing up your "real" computer! No IT support required, you can reset it to factory configuration in a heartbeat, and even if you do manage to physically break it somehow... hey, it was only $25. Perhaps most importantly, you can write a grant proposal to get a classroom full of them without having to go through the IT department. The Raspberry PI, or something like it, is the programming tool that teachers will be able to use in practice.