Google Funds Raspberry Pi And CS Teachers For UK Schools

nk497 writes "Last year, Eric Schmidt slammed British computer science teaching, saying the UK was wasting its computing heritage — since then, the Government has agreed to re-examine how the subject is taught. 'Rebooting computer science education is not straightforward,' Schmidt said. 'Scrapping the existing curriculum was a good first step — the equivalent of pulling the plug out of the wall. The question is now how to power up.' To help, Schmidt has now promised funding from Google to train 100 teachers as well as give classrooms Raspberry Pis, via charity Teach First."

Comments

The simpsons say hello

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Welcome to maths. If I have three Pepsi and drink one how refreshed would I be?"

Re:The simpsons say hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Google don't need to slap their brand all over this. They gain in two quantifiable ways:

1. Good will. Google are the good guys here.
2. A better trained workforce. They'll need engineers in ten years time, after all.

If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only I could buy one.

to train 100 teachers

[Chrisq]

Hmm, with over 3,900 secondary schools and over 21,000 primary schools in the UK that should go far.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[Anonymous Coward]

What, are you suggesting Google should be responsible for the entire UK education system?

Presumably this is a pilot project, and if it goes well, more teachers will be trained and more hardware purchased. At least that's how I'd expect this to work in a sane world.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[Simon Brooke]

For heaven's sake, it's a start, and a start is better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.

Sadly, I think it's England only. Those of you outside the United Kingdom think we're all one country, but we aren't - we're an international union just like the EU. There is no 'UK' educational system. However, we should all of us be supporting initiatives like this where ever we are.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[digitig]

What I don't understand is, why not give them real computers? Surely Google has some old desktop & server systems that are being retired that could be donated, or hell, write a check and buy a couple Linux servers, install Android SDK and relevant tools, and send some of your engineers in for intensive "here's how to hack your phone" training with the teachers. Probably wouldn't cost that much, and would probably have far more "real world" application than these ridiculously overhyped RPis.

Did you notice how the subject being taught is "Computer Science", not "IT"? There's a reason the names are different.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Loads of older, substandard computers will have their own problems -- they won't be a monoculture, so they'll be harder to administer and maintain, especially at a school where IT is often the typing teacher and his smartest student. They'll be on their way to failure and will need to constantly have parts replaced, probably at great cost because, as a government entity, the school will probably have a preferred vendor where they'll buy $100 250 GB drives and $20 case fans. They'll cost more to ship. The Pi costs $7 to ship. A 30 lb. computer would cost closer to $25 or more.

I understand if you think the Pi is underpowered for Excel, but it's perfectly adequate for its purpose: To teach basic computer science skills. Can it run Python? Yes. Can it compile C? Yes. Can it hook up to a keyboard, mouse and TV? Yes. (Note: It was an informed decision to choose TV over composite or HDMI over VGA. Yes, I own VGA monitors. Yes, they can be found cheap. Everyone with a TV has a composite input though and more people have a TV than have a monitor.)

Just because you don't want some small charity to successfully disseminate cheap computers and just because you're butthurt you can't get one for yourself right now (*wah, I want it /nooowwwwwwwwwww/*) doesn't mean it is of no value.

The OLPC failed because they couldn't hit their price point, not because it's underpowered.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[Vrekais]

The Raspberry Pi as a tool for teaching Computer Science is definitely high up there on value. Teaching it in the closed system of Windows while still completely possible can lead to some things having to be missed, due to closed administration policies and such. If you're using the Windows machines to store important work and run software used by other subjects then you can't simply have a class of Computing students come in and start re-writing the Operating System (not that they could in windows of course).

The Raspberry Pi however you can do what you like to the OS, you can show the actual way the system handles memory and processor cycles in a much more in depth way and if a student breaks it, you simply format and stick a back up on it which takes minutes rather than the hours that a Windows PC might require. A few decades ago the Computing in Schools was taught on BBC Micros, which had almost no abstraction from what was actually going on (there was some obviously but it wasn't hard to remove that as well), you could even write programs to run from the BIOS chip.

The current state of ICT education is a very MS Office dominated course of how to use a word processor and create excel spreadsheets. Something that perhaps might be best taught in other subjects, I'm not sure. I can see an argument for teaching that stuff, but at the moment it overly dominates the curriculum and it's pretty much what ends up being taught when all you have are common office desktops.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[Xest]

"Furthermore, in the UK primary sector, there exist quite advanced mechanisms for transferring "best practice" from one school to the next. The UK gov't spends real money on this and gets real results in turn."

Does it? I spent a number of years supporting "Advisory Teachers" who exist outside any one school for precisely the purpose of teaching teachers how to teach and the level of ineptitude was frankly astounding.

In fact, it was from an IT Advisory Teacher that I got my dumbest, most ridiculous ever technical support call once - "Hi, there's no paper in the printer, and an orange light on it and it wont print, can you come and have a look at it?"

Yes that's right, it wouldn't print BECAUSE IT HAD NO FUCKING PAPER IN IT. Her colleague wasn't any better, phoning up almost on a weekly basis to point out that she couldn't get sound on the training suite computer - oddly enough because she hadn't turned the fucking speakers on.

Honestly, Advisory Teachers are a prime example of a non-job, it's a high paid role (£40k - £60k p/a) and it's where teachers who were shit at teaching basically go to die.

It's these people those 100 slots Google is promoting should replace. I cannot describe how inexplicably terrible advisory teachers are. I even made the mistake of engaging in discussion with a maths one once, thinking we may have shared a common interest in maths, but no, her maths qualifications seem to just about extend to counting to 10 and nothing more.

Still it's been some years, maybe things have changed, maybe there are other mechanisms that bypass advisory teachers or something so perhaps you're right. But my experience was that local governments tended to throw literally millions of pounds a year down the drain on these people who - and I say this literally, not figuratively - weren't even fit to pass some of the most basic computing courses out there, which cover things such as doing a mail merge with Word. Bad just isn't a powerful enough word to describe how awful these people were at their jobs.

It sounds like I'm ranting, it sounds like I'm going over the top in my critique of the situation, but it really is quite unbeleivable how much of a train wreck advisory services were in the UK at least some years back - I'd be amazed if they've had a complete turn around since.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[PerfectionLost]

Training 100 teachers probably means a 2 hour lecture on plugging the thing in. Google is just after cheap publicity & karma.

Or if you RTFA:

Schmidt said the funding would be handed to the charity Teach First, to put 100 recent graduates through a six-week training course and give them equipment - including the Raspberry Pi - before sending them into schools to teach.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[ZeroSumHappiness]

These do Python and C as well as GPIO. Those are far more valuable in a Computer Science course than an office suite would be. We don't want to train kids to be secretaries, we want to train them to be engineers.

Re: to train 100 teachers

[wed128]

Did you notice how the subject being taught is "Computer Science", not "IT"? There's a reason the names are different.

I really wish people would stop making this mistake...to the point that I think we should come up with a name for CS that doesn't have the word "Computer" in it.

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes."

It's a start

[jholyhead]

That would bring the total number of specialist Computer Science teachers in the UK to...100.

Funding schmunding

[Hognoxious]

From all the gripes I see the problem is finding the little buggers.

Has anyone here actually held one in his sweaty hand?

Re:Funding schmunding

[deroby]

Man, I read your first line as 'the little buggers' = the school-children ... as apparently the UK has a bit of a problem with pupils skipping school.
That made reading the second line kind of weird !

Meanwhile

[JoeCommodore]

Microsoft has given engineers a new directive to get Windows running on the Raspberry Pi platform.

Re:Nothing better than something?

[Anonymous Coward]

There wasn't a previous curriculum. ICT was a Microsoft designed qualification in Office "skills". For one small assignment for my A-Levels I had to use every feature of Microsoft word in a single document. Yep, I had to use word art to get marks. It was unbearable documenting office software button by button and I gave up, turned it in half done. I got pathetic C in ICT... however I am now lead graphics programmer at an award winning games developers.

The current curriculum's in ICT and computing, had to be scrapped immediately before they put off another generation from learning the skills they need.

Re:100 Teachers

[strength_of_10_men]

100 teachers, each training another 100, who in turn train another 100. Perspicacity is obviously not your strong point. But I guess if you can't do anything else, at least you can bitch.