Schlagwort: education

  • Computer science education is a global challenge

    Computer science education is a global challenge

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    For the last two years, I’ve been one of the advisors to the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, a US-based think tank, on their project to survey formal computing education systems across the world. The resulting education policy report, Building skills for life: How to expand and improve computer science education around the world, pulls together the findings of their research. I’ll highlight key lessons policymakers and educators can benefit from, and what elements I think have been missed.

    Woman teacher and female students at a computer

    Why a global challenge?

    Work on this new Brookings report was motivated by the belief that if our goal is to create an equitable, global society, then we need computer science (CS) in school to be accessible around the world; countries need to educate their citizens about computer science, both to strengthen their economic situation and to tackle inequality between countries. The report states that “global development gaps will only be expected to widen if low-income countries’ investments in these domains falter while high-income countries continue to move ahead” (p. 12).

    Student using a Raspberry Pi computer

    The report makes an important contribution to our understanding of computer science education policy, providing a global overview as well as in-depth case studies of education policies around the world. The case studies look at 11 countries and territories, including England, South Africa, British Columbia, Chile, Uruguay, and Thailand. The map below shows an overview of the Brookings researchers’ findings. It indicates whether computer science is a mandatory or elective subject, whether it is taught in primary or secondary schools, and whether it is taught as a discrete subject or across the curriculum.

    It’s a patchy picture, demonstrating both countries’ level of capacity to deliver computer science education and the different approaches countries have taken. Analysis in the Brookings report shows a correlation between a country’s economic position and implementation of computer science in schools: no low-income countries have implemented it at all, while over 20% of high-income countries have mandatory computer science education at both primary and secondary level. 

    Capacity building: IT infrastructure and beyond

    Given these disparities, there is a significant focus in the report on what IT infrastructure countries need in order to deliver computer science education. This infrastructure needs to be preceded by investment (funds to afford it) and policy (a clear statement of intent and an implementation plan). Many countries that the Brookings report describes as having no computer science education may still be struggling to put these in place.

    A young woman codes in a computing classroom.

    The recently developed CAPE (capacity, access, participation, experience) framework offers another way of assessing disparities in education. To have capacity to make computer science part of formal education, a country needs to put in place the following elements:

    My view is that countries that are at the beginning of this process need to focus on IT infrastructure, but also on the other elements of capacity. The Brookings report touches on these elements of capacity as well. Once these are in place in a country, the focus can shift to the next level: access for learners.

    Comparing countries — what policies are in place?

    In their report, the Brookings researchers identify seven complementary policy actions that a country can take to facilitate implementation of computer science education:

    1. Introduction of ICT (information and communications technology) education programmes
    2. Requirement for CS in primary education
    3. Requirement for CS in secondary education
    4. Introduction of in-service CS teacher education programmes
    5. Introduction of pre-service teacher CS education programmes
    6. Setup of a specialised centre or institution focused on CS education research and training
    7. Regular funding allocated to CS education by the legislative branch of government

    The figure below compares the 11 case-study regions in terms of how many of the seven policy actions have been taken, what IT infrastructure is in place, and when the process of implementing CS education started.

    England is the only country that has taken all seven of the identified policy actions, having already had nation-wide IT infrastructure and broadband connectivity in place. Chile, Thailand, and Uruguay have made impressive progress, both on infrastructure development and on policy actions. However, it’s clear that making progress takes many years — Chile started in 1992, and Uruguay in 2007 —  and requires a considerable amount of investment and government policy direction.

    Computing education policy in England

    The first case study that Brookings produced for this report, back in 2019, related to England. Over the last 8 years in England, we have seen the development of computing education in the curriculum as a mandatory subject in primary and secondary schools. Initially, funding for teacher education was limited, but in 2018, the government provided £80 million of funding to us and a consortium of partners to establish the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE). Thus, in-service teacher education in computing has been given more priority in England than probably anywhere else in the world.

    Three young people learn coding at laptops supported by a volunteer at a CoderDojo session.

    Alongside teacher education, the funding also covered our development of classroom resources to cover the whole CS curriculum, and of Isaac Computer Science, our online platform for 14- to 18-year-olds learning computer science. We’re also working on a £2m government-funded research project looking at approaches to improving the gender balance in computing in English schools, which is due to report results next year.

    The future of education policy in the UK as it relates to AI technologies is the topic of an upcoming panel discussion I’m inviting you to attend.

    school-aged girls and a teacher using a computer together.

    The Brookings report highlights the way in which the English government worked with non-profit organisations, including us here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, to deliver on the seven policy actions. Partnerships and engagement with stakeholders appear to be key to effectively implementing computer science education within a country. 

    Lessons learned, lessons missed

    What can we learn from the Brookings report’s helicopter view of 11 case studies? How can we ensure that computer science education is going to be accessible for all children? The Brookings researchers draw our six lessons learned in their report, which I have taken the liberty of rewording and shortening here:

    1. Create demand
    2. Make it mandatory
    3. Train teachers
    4. Start early
    5. Work in partnership
    6. Make it engaging

    In the report, the sixth lesson is phrased as, “When taught in an interactive, hands-on way, CS education builds skills for life.” The Brookings researchers conclude that focusing on project-based learning and maker spaces is the way for schools to achieve this, which I don’t find convincing. The problem with project-based learning in maker spaces is one of scale: in my experience, this approach only works well in a non-formal, small-scale setting. The other reason is that maker spaces, while being very engaging, are also very expensive. Therefore, I don’t see them as a practicable aspect of a nationally rolled-out, mandatory, formal curriculum.

    When we teach computer science, it is important that we encourage young people to ask questions about ethics, power, privilege, and social justice.

    Sue Sentance

    We have other ways to make computer science engaging to all learners, using a breadth of pedagogical approaches. In particular, we should focus on cultural relevance, an aspect of education the Brookings report does not centre. Culturally relevant pedagogy is a framework for teaching that emphasises the importance of incorporating and valuing all learners’ knowledge, heritage, and ways of learning, and promotes the development of learners’ critical consciousness of the world. When we teach computer science, it is important that we encourage young people to ask questions about ethics, power, privilege, and social justice.

    Three teenage boys do coding at a shared computer during a computer science lesson.

    The Brookings report states that we need to develop and use evidence on how to teach computer science, and I agree with this. But to properly support teachers and learners, we need to offer them a range of approaches to teaching computing, rather than just focusing on one, such as project-based learning, however valuable that approach may be in some settings. Through the NCCE, we have embedded twelve pedagogical principles in the Teach Computing Curriculum, which is being rolled out to six million learners in England’s schools. In time, through this initiative, we will gain firm evidence on what the most effective approaches are for teaching computer science to all students in primary and secondary schools.

    Moving forward together

    I believe the Brookings Institution’s report has a huge contribution to make as countries around the world seek to introduce computer science in their classrooms. As we can conclude from the patchiness of the CS education world map, there is still much work to be done. I feel fortunate to be living in a country that has been able and motivated to prioritise computer science education, and I think that partnerships and working across stakeholder groups, particularly with schools and teachers, have played a large part in the progress we have made.

    To my mind, the challenge now is to find ways in which countries can work together towards more equity in computer science education around the world. The findings in this report will help us make that happen.


    PS We invite you to join us on 16 November for our online panel discussion on what the future of the UK’s education policy needs to look like to enable young people to navigate and shape AI technologies. Our speakers include UK Minister Chris Philp, our CEO Philip Colligan, and two young people currently in education. Tabitha Goldstaub, Chair of the UK government’s AI Council, will be chairing the discussion.

    Sign up for your free ticket today and submit your questions to our panel!

    Website: LINK

  • Engaging Black students in computing at UK schools — interview with Joe Arday

    Engaging Black students in computing at UK schools — interview with Joe Arday

    Reading Time: 7 minutes
    Joe Arday.

    On the occasion of Black History Month UK, we speak to Joe Arday, Computer Science teacher at Woodbridge High School in Essex, UK, about his experiences in computing education, his thoughts about underrepresentation of Black students in the subject, and his ideas about what needs to be done to engage more Black students.

    To start us off, can you share some of your thoughts about Black History Month as an occasion?

    For me personally it’s an opportunity to celebrate our culture, but my view is it shouldn’t be a month — it should be celebrated every day. I am of Ghanaian descent, so Black History Month is an opportunity to share my culture in my school and my community. Black History Month is also an opportunity to educate yourself about what happened to the generations before you. For example, my parents lived through the Brixton riots. I was born in 1984, and I got to secondary school before I heard about the Brixton riots from a teacher. But my mother made sure that, during Black History Month, we went to a lot of extracurricular activities to learn about our culture.

    For me it’s about embracing the culture I come from, being proud to be Black, and sharing that culture with the next generation, including my two kids, who are of mixed heritage. They need to know where they come from, and know their two cultures.

    Tell us a bit about your own history: how did you come to computing education?

    So I was a tech professional in the finance sector, and I was made redundant when the 2008 recession hit. I did a couple of consulting jobs, but I thought to myself, “I love tech, but in five years from now, do I really want to be going from job to job? There must be something else I can do.”

    At that time there was a huge drive to recruit more teachers to teach what was called ICT back then and is now Computing. As a result, I started my career as a teacher in 2010. As a former software consultant, I had useful skills for teaching ICT. When Computing was introduced instead, I was fortunate to be at a school that could bring in external CPD (continued professional development) providers to teach us about programming and build our understanding and skills to deliver the new curriculum. I also did a lot of self-study and spoke to lots of teachers at other schools about how to teach the subject.

    What barriers or support did you encounter in your teaching career? Did you have role models when you went into teaching?

    Not really — I had to seek them out. In my environment, there are very few Black teachers, and I was often the only Black Computer Science teacher. A parent once said to me, “I hope you’re not planning to leave, because my son needs a role model in Computer Science.” And I understood exactly what she meant by that, but I’m not even a role model, I’m just someone who’s contributing to society the best way I can. I just want to pave the way for the next generation, including my children.

    My current school is supporting me to lead all the STEM engagement for students, and in that role, some of the things I do are running a STEM club that focuses a lot on computing, and running new programmes to encourage girls into tech roles. I’ve also become a CAS Master Teacher and been part of a careers panel at Queen Mary University London about the tech sector, for hundreds of school students from across London. And I was selected by the National Centre for Computing Education as one of their facilitators in the Computer Science Accelerator CPD programme.

    But there’s been a lack of leadership opportunities for me in schools. I’ve applied for middle-leadership roles and have been told my face doesn’t fit in an interview in a previous school. And I’m just as skilled and experienced as other candidates: I’ve been acting Head of Department, acting Head of Year — what more do I need to do? But I’ve not had access to middle-leadership roles. I’ve been told I’m an average teacher, but then I’ve been put onto dealing with “difficult” students if they’re Black, because a few of my previous schools have told me that I was “good at dealing with behaviour”. So that tells you about the role I was pigeonholed into.

    It is very important for Black students to have role models, and to have a curriculum that reflects them.

    Joe Arday

    I’ve never worked for a Black Headteacher, and the proportion of Black teachers in senior leadership positions is very low, only 1%. So I am considering moving into a different area of computing education, such as edtech or academia, because in schools I don’t have the opportunities to progress because of my ethnicity.

    Do you think this lack of leadership opportunities is an experience other Black teachers share?

    I think it is, that’s why the number of Black teachers is so low. And as a Black student of Computer Science considering a teaching role, I would look around my school and think, if I go into teaching, where are the opportunities going to come from?

    Black students are underrepresented in computing. Could you share your thoughts about why that’s the case?

    There’s a lack of role models across the board: in schools, but also in tech leadership roles, CEOs and company directors. And the interest of Black students isn’t fostered early on, in Year 8, Year 9 (ages 12–14). If they don’t have a teacher who is able to take them to career fairs or to tech companies, they’re not going to get exposure, they’re not going to think, “Oh, I can see myself doing that.” So unless they have a lot of interest already, they’re not going to pick Computer Science when it comes to choosing their GCSEs, because it doesn’t look like it’s for them.

    But we need diverse people in computing and STEM, especially girls. As the father of a boy and a girl of mixed heritage, that’s very important to me. Some schools I’ve worked in, they pushed computer science into the background, and it’s such a shame. They don’t have the money or the time for their teachers to do the CPD to teach it properly. And if attitudes at the top are negative, that’s going to filter down. But even if students don’t go into the tech industry, they still need digital skills to go into any number of sectors. Every young person needs them.

    It is very important for Black students to have role models, and to have a curriculum that reflects them. Students need to see themselves in their lessons and not feel ignored by what is being taught. I was very fortunate to be selected for the working group for the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s culturally relevant teaching guidelines, and I’m currently running some CPD for teachers around this. I bet in the future Ofsted will look at how diverse the curriculum of schools is.

    What do you think tech organisations can do in order to engage more Black students in computing?

    I think tech organisations need to work with schools and offer work experience placements. When I was a student, 20 years ago, I went on a placement, and that set me on the right path. Nowadays, many students don’t do work experience, they are school leavers before they do an internship. So why do so many schools and organisations not help 14- or 15-year-olds spend a week or two doing a placement and learning some real-life skills?

    A mentor explains Scratch code using a projector in a coding club session.

    And I think it’s very important for teachers to be able to keep up to date with the latest technologies so they can support their students with what they need to know when they start their own careers, and can be convincing doing it. I encourage my GCSE Computer Science students to learn about things like cloud computing and cybersecurity, about the newest types of technologies that are being used in the tech sector now. That way they’re preparing themselves. And if I was a Headteacher, I would help my students gain professional certifications that they can use when they apply for jobs.

    What is a key thing that people in computing education can do to engage more Black students?

    Teachers could run a STEM or computing club with a Black History Month theme to get Black students interested — and it doesn’t have to stop at Black History Month. And you can make computing cross-curricular, so there could be a project with all teachers, where each one runs a lesson that involves a bit of coding, so that all students can see that computing really is for everyone.

    What would you say to teachers to encourage them to take up Computer Science as a subject?

    Because of my role working for the NCCE, I always encourage teachers to join the NCCE’s Computer Science Accelerator programme and to retrain to teach Computer Science. It’s a beautiful subject, all you need to do is give it a chance.

    Thank you, Joe, for sharing your thoughts with us!

    Joe was part of the group of teachers we worked with to create our practical guide on culturally relevant teaching in the computing classroom. You can download it as a free PDF now to help you think about how to reflect all your students in your lessons.

    Website: LINK

  • Hello World’s first-ever special edition is here!

    Hello World’s first-ever special edition is here!

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Hello World, our free magazine for computing and digital making educators, has just published its very first special edition: The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy!

    “When I started to peruse the draft for The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, I was simply stunned.”

    Monica McGill, founder & CEO of CSEDResearch.org

    Cover of The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.

    This special edition focuses on practical approaches to teaching computing in the classroom, and includes some of our favourite pedagogically themed articles from previous issues of Hello World, as well as a few never-seen-before pieces. It is structured around twelve pedagogical principles, first developed by us as part of our work related to the National Centre for Computing Education in England. These twelve principles are based on up-to-date research around the best ways of approaching the teaching and learning of computing.

    A girl doing a physical computing project with Raspberry Pi hardware.

    Grounded in research and practice

    Computing education is still relatively new, and it’s a field that’s constantly changing and adapting. Despite leaving school less than ten years ago, I remember my days in the computer lab being limited to learning about how to add animations on PowerPoints and trying out basic Excel formulas (and yes, there was still the odd mouse with a ball knocking about!).

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy — a big hit with educators!

    Computing education research is even younger, and we are proud to be an important part of this growing space. As an organisation, we engage in rigorous original research around computing education and learning for young people, and we share all of our research work through blogs, reports, research seminars, and academic publications. We’re particularly proud to have partnered with the University of Cambridge to establish the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre

    12 principles of computing pedagogy: lead with concepts; structure lessons; make concrete; unplug, unpack, repack; work together; read and explore code first; foster program comprehension; model everything; challenge misconceptions; create projects; get hands-on; add variety.
    Our special edition of Hello World is organised around twelve pedagogical principles.

    The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy represents another way in which we bring research and practice to computing educators in an accessible and engaging way. The book aims to be an educator’s companion to learning about tried and tested approaches to teaching computing.

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    The perfect morning read for computing educators.

    It includes articles on techniques for fostering program comprehension, advice for bringing physical computing to your classroom, and introductions to frameworks for structuring your computing lessons. As with all Hello World content, we’re bridging the gap between research and practice by giving you accessible chunks of research, followed by stories of trusty educators who have tried out the approaches in their classroom or educational space.

    A tweet praising The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.
    Teachers are jumping for joy at this special edition.

    Monica McGill, founder and CEO of CSEDResearch.org, says about Hello World’s latest offering, “When I started to peruse the draft for The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, I was simply stunned. I found the ready-to-consume content to be solidly based on research evidence and tried-and-true best practices from teachers themselves. This resource provides valuable insights into introducing computing to students via unplugged activities, integrating the Predict–Run–Investigate–Modify–Make (PRIMM) pedagogical model, and introducing physical devices for computing — all written in a way that teachers can adopt and use in their own classrooms.”

    We’ve been thrilled to see the reaction of educators to this special edition, with many teachers already using it as a reference guide and for a spot of CPD. Why not join them and download it for free today?

    Subscribe now to get each new Hello World — whether regular issue or special edition — straight to your digital inbox, for free! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or unpaid work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.

    PS Have you listened to our Hello World podcast yet? A new episode has just come out, and it’s great! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

    Website: LINK

  • Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2021 for schools!

    Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2021 for schools!

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The annual UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge is back to provide fun, brain-teasing puzzles for schools from 8 to 19 November!

    The UK Bebras Challenge 2021 runs from 8 to 19 November.

    In the free Bebras Challenge, your students get to practise their computational thinking skills while solving a set of accessible, puzzling, and engaging tasks over 40 minutes. It’s tailored for age groups from 6 to 18.

    “I just want to say how much the children are enjoying this competition. It is the first year we have entered, and I have students aged 8 to 11 participating in my Computing lessons, with some of our older students also taking on the challenges. It is really helping to challenge their thinking, and they are showing great determination to try and complete each task!”

    – A UK-based teacher

    Ten key facts about Bebras

    1. It’s free!
    2. The challenge takes place in school, and it’s a great whole-school activity
    3. It’s open to learners aged 6 to 18, with activities for different age groups
    4. The challenge is made up of a set of short tasks, and completing it takes 40 minutes
    5. The closing date for registering your school is 4 November
    6. Your learners need to complete the challenge between 8 and 19 November 2021
    7. All the marking is done for you (hurrah!)
    8. You’ll receive the results and answers the week after the challenge ends, so you can go through them with your learners and help them learn more
    9. The tasks are logical thinking puzzles, so taking part does not require any computing knowledge
    10. There are practice questions you can use to help your learners prepare for the challenge, and throughout the year to help them practice their computational thinking

    Do you want to support your learners to take on the Bebras Challenge? Then register your school today!

    Remember to sign up by 4 November!

    The benefits of Bebras

    Bebras is an international challenge that started in Lithuania in 2004 and has grown into a worldwide event. The UK became involved in Bebras for the first time in 2013, and the number of participating students has increased from 21,000 in the first year to more than half a million over the last two years! Internationally, nearly 2.5 million learners took part in 2020 despite the disruptions to schools.

    On the left, a drawing of a bracelet made of stars and moons.
    On the left, a bracelet design from an activity for ages 10–12. On the right, a password checker from an activity for ages 14–16.

    Bebras, brought to you in the UK by us and Oxford University, is a great way to give your learners of all age groups a taste of the principles behind computing by engaging them in fun problem-solving activities. The challenge results highlight computing principles, so Bebras can be educational for you as a teacher too.

    Throughout the year, questions from previous years of the challenge are available to registered teachers on the bebras.uk website, where you can create self-marking quizzes to help you deliver the computational thinking part of the curriculum for your classes.

    You can register your school at bebras.uk/admin.

    Learn more about our work to support learners with computational thinking.

    Website: LINK

  • Learn the fundamentals of AI and machine learning with our free online course

    Learn the fundamentals of AI and machine learning with our free online course

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Join our free online course Introduction to Machine Learning and AI to discover the fundamentals of machine learning and learn to train your own machine learning models using free online tools.

    Drawing of a machine learning robot helping a human identify spam at a computer.

    Although artificial intelligence (AI) was once the province of science fiction, these days you’re very likely to hear the term in relation to new technologies, whether that’s facial recognition, medical diagnostic tools, or self-driving cars, which use AI systems to make decisions or predictions.

    By the end of this free, online, self-paced course, you will have an appreciation for what goes into machine learning and artificial intelligence systems — and why you should think carefully about what comes out.

    Machine learning — a brief overview

    You’ll also often hear about AI systems that use machine learning (ML). Very simply, we can say that programs created using ML are ‘trained’ on large collections of data to ‘learn’ to produce more accurate outputs over time. One rather funny application you might have heard of is the ‘muffin or chihuahua?’ image recognition task.

    Drawing of a machine learning ars rover trying to decide whether it is seeing an alien or a rock.

    More precisely, we would say that a ML algorithm builds a model, based on large collections of data (the training data), without being explicitly programmed to do so. The model is ‘finished’ when it makes predictions or decisions with an acceptable level of accuracy. (For example, it rarely mistakes a muffin for a chihuahua in a photo.) It is then considered to be able to make predictions or decisions using new data in the real world.

    It’s important to understand AI and ML — especially for educators

    But how does all this actually work? If you don’t know, it’s hard to judge what the impacts of these technologies might be, and how we can be sure they benefit everyone — an important discussion that needs to involve people from across all of society. Not knowing can also be a barrier to using AI, whether that’s for a hobby, as part of your job, or to help your community solve a problem.

    some things that machine learning and AI systems can be built into: streetlamps, waste collecting vehicles, cars, traffic lights.

    For teachers and educators it’s particularly important to have a good foundational knowledge of AI and ML, as they need to teach their learners what the young people need to know about these technologies and how they impact their lives. (We’ve also got a free seminar series about teaching these topics.)

    To help you understand the fundamentals of AI and ML, we’ve put together a free online course: Introduction to Machine Learning and AI. Over four weeks in two hours per week, learning at your own pace, you’ll find out how machine learning can be used to solve problems, without going too deeply into the mathematical details. You’ll also get to grips with the different ways that machines ‘learn’, and you will try out online tools such as Machine Learning for Kids and Teachable Machine to design and train your own machine learning programs.

    What types of problems and tasks are AI systems used for?

    As well as finding out how these AI systems work, you’ll look at the different types of tasks that they can help us address. One of these is classification — working out which group (or groups) something fits in, such as distinguishing between positive and negative product reviews, identifying an animal (or a muffin) in an image, or spotting potential medical problems in patient data.

    You’ll also learn about other types of tasks ML programs are used for, such as regression (predicting a numerical value from a continuous range) and knowledge organisation (spotting links between different pieces of data or clusters of similar data). Towards the end of the course you’ll dive into one of the hottest topics in AI today: neural networks, which are ML models whose design is inspired by networks of brain cells (neurons).

    drawing of a small machine learning neural network.

    Before an ML program can be trained, you need to collect data to train it with. During the self-paced course you’ll see how tools from statistics and data science are important for ML — but also how ethical issues can arise both when data is collected and when the outputs of an ML program are used.

    By the end of the course, you will have an appreciation for what goes into machine learning and artificial intelligence systems — and why you should think carefully about what comes out.

    Sign up today to take the course for free

    The Introduction to Machine Learning and AI course is open for you to sign up to now. Sign-ups will pause after 12 December. Once you sign up, you’ll have access for six weeks. During this time you’ll be able to interact with your fellow learners, and before 25 October, you’ll also benefit from the support of our expert facilitators. So what are you waiting for?

    Share your views as part of our research

    As part of our research on computing education, we would like to find out about educators’ views on machine learning. Before you start the course, we will ask you to complete a short survey. As a thank you for helping us with our research, you will be offered the chance to take part in a prize draw for a £50 book token!

    Learn more about AI, its impacts, and teaching learners about them

    To develop your computing knowledge and skills, you might also want to:

    If you are a teacher in England, you can develop your teaching skills through the National Centre for Computing Education, which will give you free upgrades for our courses (including Introduction to Machine Learning and AI) so you’ll receive certificates and unlimited access.

    Website: LINK

  • Learn the fundamentals of AI and machine learning with our free online course

    Learn the fundamentals of AI and machine learning with our free online course

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Join our free online course Introduction to Machine Learning and AI to discover the fundamentals of machine learning and learn to train your own machine learning models using free online tools.

    Drawing of a machine learning robot helping a human identify spam at a computer.

    Although artificial intelligence (AI) was once the province of science fiction, these days you’re very likely to hear the term in relation to new technologies, whether that’s facial recognition, medical diagnostic tools, or self-driving cars, which use AI systems to make decisions or predictions.

    By the end of this free, online, self-paced course, you will have an appreciation for what goes into machine learning and artificial intelligence systems — and why you should think carefully about what comes out.

    Machine learning — a brief overview

    You’ll also often hear about AI systems that use machine learning (ML). Very simply, we can say that programs created using ML are ‘trained’ on large collections of data to ‘learn’ to produce more accurate outputs over time. One rather funny application you might have heard of is the ‘muffin or chihuahua?’ image recognition task.

    Drawing of a machine learning ars rover trying to decide whether it is seeing an alien or a rock.

    More precisely, we would say that a ML algorithm builds a model, based on large collections of data (the training data), without being explicitly programmed to do so. The model is ‘finished’ when it makes predictions or decisions with an acceptable level of accuracy. (For example, it rarely mistakes a muffin for a chihuahua in a photo.) It is then considered to be able to make predictions or decisions using new data in the real world.

    It’s important to understand AI and ML — especially for educators

    But how does all this actually work? If you don’t know, it’s hard to judge what the impacts of these technologies might be, and how we can be sure they benefit everyone — an important discussion that needs to involve people from across all of society. Not knowing can also be a barrier to using AI, whether that’s for a hobby, as part of your job, or to help your community solve a problem.

    some things that machine learning and AI systems can be built into: streetlamps, waste collecting vehicles, cars, traffic lights.

    For teachers and educators it’s particularly important to have a good foundational knowledge of AI and ML, as they need to teach their learners what the young people need to know about these technologies and how they impact their lives. (We’ve also got a free seminar series about teaching these topics.)

    To help you understand the fundamentals of AI and ML, we’ve put together a free online course: Introduction to Machine Learning and AI. Over four weeks in two hours per week, learning at your own pace, you’ll find out how machine learning can be used to solve problems, without going too deeply into the mathematical details. You’ll also get to grips with the different ways that machines ‘learn’, and you will try out online tools such as Machine Learning for Kids and Teachable Machine to design and train your own machine learning programs.

    What types of problems and tasks are AI systems used for?

    As well as finding out how these AI systems work, you’ll look at the different types of tasks that they can help us address. One of these is classification — working out which group (or groups) something fits in, such as distinguishing between positive and negative product reviews, identifying an animal (or a muffin) in an image, or spotting potential medical problems in patient data.

    You’ll also learn about other types of tasks ML programs are used for, such as regression (predicting a numerical value from a continuous range) and knowledge organisation (spotting links between different pieces of data or clusters of similar data). Towards the end of the course you’ll dive into one of the hottest topics in AI today: neural networks, which are ML models whose design is inspired by networks of brain cells (neurons).

    drawing of a small machine learning neural network.

    Before an ML program can be trained, you need to collect data to train it with. During the self-paced course you’ll see how tools from statistics and data science are important for ML — but also how ethical issues can arise both when data is collected and when the outputs of an ML program are used.

    By the end of the course, you will have an appreciation for what goes into machine learning and artificial intelligence systems — and why you should think carefully about what comes out.

    Sign up today to take the course for free

    The Introduction to Machine Learning and AI course is open for you to sign up to now. Sign-ups will pause after 12 December. Once you sign up, you’ll have access for six weeks. During this time you’ll be able to interact with your fellow learners, and before 25 October, you’ll also benefit from the support of our expert facilitators. So what are you waiting for?

    Share your views as part of our research

    As part of our research on computing education, we would like to find out about educators’ views on machine learning. Before you start the course, we will ask you to complete a short survey. As a thank you for helping us with our research, you will be offered the chance to take part in a prize draw for a £50 book token!

    Learn more about AI, its impacts, and teaching learners about them

    To develop your computing knowledge and skills, you might also want to:

    If you are a teacher in England, you can develop your teaching skills through the National Centre for Computing Education, which will give you free upgrades for our courses (including Introduction to Machine Learning and AI) so you’ll receive certificates and unlimited access.

    Website: LINK

  • Inspiring learners about computing through health and well-being projects | Hello World #17

    Inspiring learners about computing through health and well-being projects | Hello World #17

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Your brand-new issue of the free Hello World magazine for computing educators focuses on all things health and well-being, featuring useful tools for educators, great ideas for schools, and inspiring projects, ideas, and resources from teachers around the world!

    Cover of issue 17 of Hello World.

    One such project was created by the students of James Abela, Head of Computing at Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur, Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, founder of the South East Asian Computer Science Teachers Association, and author of The Gamified Classroom:

    Protecting children from breathing hazardous air

    In 2018, Indonesia burned approximately 529,000 hectares of land. That’s an area more than three times the size of Greater London, or almost the size of Brunei. With so much forest being burned, the whole region felt the effects of the pollution. Schools frequently had to ban outdoor play and PE lessons, and on some days schools were closed completely. Many schools in the region had an on-site CO2 detector to know when pollution was bad, but by the time the message could get out, children had already been breathing in the polluted air for several minutes.

    A forest fire.
    The air pollution from a forest fire gets dispersed by winds and can spread way beyond the area of the fire.

    My Year 12 students (aged 16–17) followed the news and weather forecasts intently, and we all started to see how the winds from Singapore and Sumatra were sending pollution to us in Kuala Lumpur. We also realised that if we had measurements from around the city, we might have some visibility as to when pollution was likely to affect our school.

    Making room for student-led projects

    I’ve always encouraged my students to do their own projects, because it gives programming tasks meaning and creates something that they can be genuinely proud of. The other benefit is that it is something to talk about in university essays and interviews, especially as they often need to do extensive research to solve the problems central to their projects.

    This project was […] a genuine passion project in every sense of the word.

    James Abela

    This project was much more than this: it was a genuine passion project in every sense of the word. Three of my students approached me with the idea of tracking CO2 to give schools a better idea of when there was pollution and which way it was going. They had had some experience of using Raspberry Pi computers, and knew that it was possible to use them to make weather stations, and that the latest versions had wireless LAN capability that they could use. I agreed to support them during allocated programming time, and to help them reach out to other schools.

    Circuit design of the CO2 sensor using just Raspberry Pi, designed on circuito.io

    I was able to offer students support with this project because I flip quite a lot of the theory in my class. Flipped learning is a teaching approach in which some direct instruction, for example reading articles or watching specific videos, is done at home. This enables more class time to be used to answer questions, work through higher-order tasks, or do group work, and it creates more supervised coding time.

    I was able to offer students support with this project because I flip quite a lot of the theory in my class.

    James Abela

    I initially started doing this because when I set coding challenges for homework, I often had students who confessed they spent all night trying to solve it, only for me to glance at the code and notice a missing colon or indentation issue. I began flipping the less difficult theory for students to do as homework, to create more programming time in class where we could resolve issues more quickly. This then evolved into a system where students could work much more at their own pace and eventually led to a point at which older students could, in effect, learn through their own projects, such as the pollution monitor.

    Building the pollution monitor

    The students started by looking at existing weather station projects — for example, there is an excellent tutorial on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s projects site. Students discovered that wind data is relatively easy to get over a larger area, but the key component would be something to measure CO2. […]

    Check out issue 17 of Hello World to read the rest of James’s article and find out all the details about the hardware and software his students used for this passion project. He says:

    This project really helped these students to decide whether they enjoyed the hardware side of computing, and solving real-world issues really encouraged them to see computing as a practical subject. This is a message that has really resonated with other students, and we’ve since doubled the number of students taking A level computer science.

    James Abela

    Download the new Hello World for free!

    Issue 17 of Hello World is bursting with inspiring ideas for teaching your learners about computing in the context of health and well-being. And you’ll find lots more great content in its 100 pages!

    James’s article is also a wonderful example of an educator empowering their students to build a tech project they care about. You’ll discover more insights and practical tips on making computing relevant to all your learners in the following articles of the new Hello World issue:

    • Inspiring Young People With Contexts They Care About
    • Computing for all: Designing a Culturally Relevant Curriculum
    • Going Back to Basics: Part 2 — a follow-on from issue 16 about how to take beginner digital makers through their first physical computing projects

    Download the new issue of Hello World for free today:

    If you’re an educator based in the UK, you can subscribe to receive each new issue in print completely free!

    We’ve also just released the first-ever special edition of Hello World — The Big Book of Pedagogy — which focuses on approaches to teaching computing in the classroom. Download it for free today.

    And wherever you are in the world, don’t forget to listen to the Hello World podcast, where each episode we dive into a new topic from the magazine with some of the computing educators who’ve written for us.

    Website: LINK

  • Engaging Black students in computing at school — interview with Lynda Chinaka

    Engaging Black students in computing at school — interview with Lynda Chinaka

    Reading Time: 10 minutes
    Lynda Chinaka.

    On the occasion of Black History Month UK, we speak to Lynda Chinaka, Senior Lecturer in Computing in Education at the University of Roehampton, about her experiences in computing education, her thoughts about underrepresentation of Black students in the subject, and her ideas about what needs to be done to engage more Black students.

    Lynda, to start us off, can you share your thoughts about Black History Month?

    Black history is a really important topic, obviously, and I think that, when Black History Month was first introduced, it was very powerful — and it continues to be in certain places. But I think that, for where we are as a society, it’s time to move past talking about Black history for only one month of the year, albeit an important, focused celebration. And certainly that would include integrating Black history and Black figures across subjects in school. That would be a very useful way to celebrate the contributions that Black people have made, and continue to make, to society. Children need to be taught a history in which they are included and valued. Good history is always a matter of different perspectives. Too often in schools, children experience a single perspective.  

    Please tell me a bit about your own history: how did you come to computing education as a field? What were the support or barriers you encountered?

    In terms of my journey, I’ve always been passionate about Computing — formerly ICT. I’ve been a Computing subject lead in schools, moving on into senior management. Beyond my career in schools, I have worked as an ICT consultant and as a Teacher Leader for a London authority. During that time, my interest in Computing/ICT led me to undertake an MA in Computing in Education at King’s College London. This led me to become a teacher trainer in my current role. In some sense, I’m carrying on the work I did with the local authorities, but in a university setting. At the University of Roehampton, I teach computing to BA Primary Education and PGCE students. Training teachers is something that I’m very much interested in. It’s about engaging student teachers, supporting them in developing their understanding of Computing in the primary phases. Students learn about the principles of computing, related learning theories, and how children think and learn. Perhaps more importantly, I am keen to instil a love of the subject and broaden their notions about computing.

    A teacher attending Picademy laughs as she works through an activity

    In terms of the support I’ve received, I’ve worked in certain schools where Computing was really valued by the Headteacher, which enabled me to promote my vision for the subject. Supportive colleagues made a difference in their willingness take on new initiatives that I presented. I have been fortunate to work in local authorities that have been forward-thinking; one school became a test bed for Computing. So in that sense, schools have supported me. But as a Black person, a Black woman in particular, I would say that I faced barriers throughout my career. And those barriers have been there since childhood. In the Black community, people experience all sorts of things, and prejudice and barriers have been at play in my career.

    Prejudice sometimes is very overt. An example I think I can share because it prevented me from getting a job: I went for an interview in a school. It was a very good interview, the Headteacher told me, “It was fantastic, you’re amazing, you’re excellent,” the problem was that there weren’t “enough Black pupils”, so she “didn’t see the need…”. And this is a discussion that was shared with me. Now in 2021 a Headteacher wouldn’t say that, but let’s just wind the clock back 15 years. These are the kinds of experiences that you go through as a Black teacher.

    So what happens is, you tend to build up a certain resilience. People’s perceptions and low expectations of me have been a hindrance. This can be debilitating. You get tired of having to go through the same thing, of having to overcome negativity. Yes, I would say this has limited my progress. Obviously, I am speaking about my particular experiences as a Black woman, but I would say that these experiences are shared by many people like me.

    An educator teaches students to create with technology.

    But it’s my determination and the investment I’ve made that has resulted in me staying in the field. And a source of support for me is always Black colleagues, they understand the issues that are inherent within the profession. 

    Black students are underrepresented in Computing as a subject. Drawing on your own work and experiences, could you share your thoughts about why that’s the case?

    There need to be more Black teachers, because children need to see themselves represented in schools. As a Black teacher, I know that I have made a difference to Black children in my class who had a Black role model in front of them. When we talk about the poor performance of Black pupils, we need to be careful not to blame them for the failures of the education system. Policy makers, Headteachers, teachers, and practitioners need to be a lot more self-aware and examine the impact of racism in education. People need to examine their own policies and practice, especially people in positions of power.

    A lot of collective work needs to be done.

    Lynda Chinaka

    Some local authorities do better than others, and some Headteachers I’ve worked with have been keen to build a diverse staff team. Black people are not well-represented at all in education. Headteachers need to be more proactive about their staff teams and recruitment. And they need to encourage Black teachers to go for jobs in senior management.

    An educator helps a young person with a computing problem.

    In all settings I taught in, no matter how many students of colour there were, these students would experience something in my classroom that their white counterparts had experienced all their lives: they would leave their home and come to school and be taught by someone who looks like them and perhaps speaks the same language as them. It’s enormously affirming for children to have that experience. And it’s important for all children actually, white children as well. Seeing a Black person teaching in the classroom, in a position of power or influence — it changes their mindset, and that ultimately changes perspectives.

    So in terms of that route into Computing, Black students need to see themselves represented.

    Why do you think it’s important to teach young people about Computing?

    It’s absolutely vital to teach children about Computing. As adults, they are going to participate in a future that we know very little about, so I think it’s important that they’re taught computer science approaches, problem solving and computational thinking. So children need to be taught to be creators and not simply passive users of technology.

    A Coolest Projects participant

    One of the things some of my university students say is, “Oh my goodness, I can’t teach Computing, all the children know much more than me.”, but actually, that’s a little bit of a myth, I think. Children are better at using technologies than solving computing problems. They need to learn a range of computational approaches for solving problems. Computing is a life skill; it is the future. We saw during the pandemic the effects of digital inequity on pupils.

    What do you think needs to change in computing education, the tech sector, or elsewhere in order to engage more Black students in Computing?

    In education, we need to look at the curriculum and how to decolonise it to really engage young people. This also includes looking out for bias and prejudice in the things that are taught. Even when you’re thinking about specific computer science topics. So for example, the traditional example for algorithm design is making a cup of tea. But tea is a universal drink, it originates in China, and as a result of colonialism made its way to India and Kenya. So we drink tea universally, but the method (algorithm) for making tea doesn’t necessarily always include a china tea pot or a tea bag. There are lots of ways to introduce it, thinking about how it’s prepared in different cultures, say Kenya or the Punjab, and using that as a basis for developing children’s algorithmic thinking. This is culturally relevant. It’s about bringing the interests and experiences children have into the classroom.

    Young women in a computing lesson.

    For children to be engaged in Computing, there needs to be a payoff for them. For example, I’ve seen young people developing their own African emojis. They need to see a point to it! They don’t necessarily have to become computer scientists or software engineers, but Computing should be an avenue that opens for them because they can see it as something to further their own aims, their own causes. Young people are very socially and politically aware. For example, Black communities are very aware of the way that climate change affects the Global South and could use data science to highlight this. Many will have extended family living in these regions that are affected now.

    So you don’t compromise on the quality of your teaching, and it require teachers to be more reflective. There is no quick fix. For example, you can’t just insert African masks into a lesson without exploring their meaning in real depth within the culture they originate from.

    So in your Computing or Computer Science lessons, you need to include topics young people are interested in: climate change, discrimination, algorithms and algorithmic bias in software, surveillance and facial recognition. Social justice topics are close to their hearts. You can get them interested in AI and data science by talking about the off-the-shelf datasets that Big Tech uses, and about what impact these have in terms of surveillance and on minority communities specifically. 

    Can you talk a bit about the different terms used to describe this kind of approach to education, ‘culturally relevant teaching’ and ‘decolonising the curriculum’?

    ‘Culturally relevant’ is easier to sit with. ‘Decolonising the curriculum’ provokes a reaction, but it’s really about teaching children about histories and perspectives on curricula that affect us all. We need to move towards a curriculum that is fit for purpose where children are taught different perspectives and truth that they recognise. Even if you’re in a school without any Black children at all, the curriculum still needs to be decolonised so that children can actually understand and benefit from the many ways that topics, events, subjects may be taught.

    A woman teacher helps a young person with a coding project.

    When we think about learning in terms of being culturally relevant and responsive, this is about harnessing children’s heritage, experiences, and viewpoints to engage learners such that the curriculum is meaningful and includes them. The goal here is to promote long-term and consistent engagement with Computing.

    What is being missed by current initiatives to increase diversity and Black students’ engagement?

    Diversity initiatives are a good step, but we need to give it time. 

    The selection process for subjects at GCSE can sometimes affect the uptake of computing. Then there are individual attitudes and experiences of pupils. It has been documented that Black and Asian students have often been in the minority and experience marginalisation, particularly noted in the case of female students in GCSE Computer Science.

    ITE (Initial Teacher Education) providers need to consider their partnerships with schools and support schools to be more inclusive. We need more Black teachers, as I said. We also need to democratise pathways for young people getting into computing and STEM careers. Applying to university is one way — there should be others.

    Schools could also develop partnerships with organisations that have their roots in the Black community. Research has also highlighted discriminatory practices in careers advice, and in the application and interview processes of Russell Group universities. These need to be addressed.

    A students in a computer science lecture.

    There are too few Black academics at universities. This can have an impact on student choice and decisions about whether to attend an institution or not. Institutions may seem unwelcoming or unsympathetic. Higher education institutions need to eliminate bias through feedback and measuring course take-up. 

    Outside the field of education, tech companies could offer summer schemes, short programmes to stimulate interest amongst young Black people. Really, the people in leadership positions, all the people with the power, need to be proactive.

    A lot of collective work needs to be done. It’s a whole pipeline, and everybody needs to play a part.

    What in your mind is a key thing right now that people in computing education who want to engage more Black students should do?

    You can present children with Black pioneers in computing and tech. They can show Black children how to achieve their goals in life through computing. For example, create podcasts or make lists with various organisations that use data science to further specific causes.

    It’s not a one-off, one teacher thing, it’s a project for the whole school.

    Lynda Chinaka

    Also, it’s not a one-off, one teacher thing, it’s project for the whole school. You need to build it into a whole curriculum map, do all the things you do to build a new curriculum map: get every teacher to contribute, so they take it on, own it, research it, make those links to the national curriculum so it’s relevant. Looking at it in isolation it’s a problem, but it’s a whole school approach that starts as a working group. And it’s senior management that sets the tone, and they really need to be proactive, but you can start by starting a working group. It won’t be implemented overnight. A bit like introducing a school uniform. Do it slowly, have a pilot year group. Get parents in, have a coffee evening, get school governors on board. It’s a whole staff team effort.

    People need to recognise the size of the problem and not be discouraged by the fact that things haven’t happened overnight. But people who are in a position of influence need to start by having those conversations, because that’s the only way that change can happen, quite frankly.

    Lynda, thank you for sharing your insights with us!

    Lynda was one of the advisors in the group we worked with to create our recently published, practical guide on culturally relevant teaching. You can download it as a free PDF now. We hope it will help you kickstart conversations in your setting.

    Website: LINK

  • Perspectives on supporting young people in low-income areas to access and engage with computing

    Perspectives on supporting young people in low-income areas to access and engage with computing

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission is to make computing and digital making accessible to all. To support young people at risk of educational disadvantage because they don’t have access to computing devices outside of school, we’ve set up the Learn at Home campaign. But access is only one part of the story. To learn more about what support these young people need across organisations and countries, we set up a panel discussion at the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference.

    Two young African women work at desktop computers.

    The three panelists provided a stimulating discussion of some key issues in supporting young people in low-income areas in the UK, USA, and Guyana to engage with computing, and we hope their insights are of use to educators, youth workers, and organisations around the world.

    The panellists and their perspectives

    Our panellists represent three different countries, and all have experience of teaching in schools and/or working with young people outside of the formal education system. Because of the differences between countries in terms of access to computing, having this spread of expertise and contexts allowed the panelists to compare lessons learned in different sectors and locations.

    Lenlandlar Singh

    Panelist Lenandlar Singh is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Guyana. In Guyana, there is a range of computing-related courses for high school students, and access to optional qualifications in computer science at A level (age 17–18).

    Yolanda Payne.

    Panelist Yolanda Payne is a Research Associate at the Constellations Center at Georgia Tech, USA. In the US, computing curricula differ across states, although there is some national leadership through associations, centres, and corporations.

    Christina Watson.

    Christina Watson is Assistant Director of Design at UK Youth*, UK. The UK has a mandatory computing curriculum for learners aged 5–18, although curricula vary across the four home nations (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland).

    As the moderator, I posed the following three questions, which the panelists answered from their own perspectives and experiences:

    • What are the key challenges for young people to engage with computing in or out of school, and what have you done to overcome these challenges?
    • What do you see as the role of formal and non-formal learning opportunities in computing for these young people?
    • What have you learned that could help other people working with these young people and their communities in the future?

    Similarities across contexts

    One of the aspects of the discussion that really stood out was the number of similarities across the panellists’ different contexts. 

    The first of these similarities was the lack of access to computing amongst young people from low-income families, particularly in more rural areas, across all three countries. These access issues concerned devices and digital infrastructure, but also the types of opportunities in and out of school that young people were able to engage with.

    Two girls code at a desktop computer while a female mentor observes them.

    Christina (UK) shared results from a survey conducted with Aik Saath, a youth organisation in the UK Youth network (see graphs below). The results highlighted that very few young people in low-income areas had access to their own device for online learning, and mostly their access was to a smartphone or tablet rather than a computer. She pointed out that youth organisations can struggle to provide access to computing not only due to lack of funding, but also because they don’t have secure spaces in which to store equipment.

    Lenandlar (Guyana) and Christina (UK) also discussed the need to improve the digital skills and confidence of teachers and youth workers so they can support young people with their computing education. While Lenandlar spoke about recruitment and training of qualified computing teachers in Guyana, Christina suggested that it was less important for youth workers in the UK to become experts in the field and more important for them to feel empowered and confident in supporting young people to explore computing and understand different career paths. UK Youth found that partnering with organisations that provided technical expertise (such as us at the Raspberry Pi Foundation) allowed youth workers to focus on the broader support that the young people needed.

    Both Yolanda (US) and Lenandlar (Guyana) discussed the restrictive nature of the computing curriculum in schools, agreeing with Christina (UK) that outside of the classroom, there was more freedom for young people to explore different aspects of computing. All three agreed that introducing more fun and relevant activities into the curriculum made young people excited about computing and reduced stereotypes and misconceptions about the discipline and career. Yolanda explained that using modern, real-life examples and role models was a key part of connecting with young people and engaging them in computing.

    What can teachers do to support young people and their families?

    Yolanda (US) advocated strongly for listening to students and their communities to help understand what is meaningful and relevant to them. One example of this approach is to help young people and their families understand the economics of technology, and how computing can be used to support, develop, and sustain businesses and employment in their community. As society has become more reliant on computing and technology, this can translate into real economic impact.

    A CoderDojo coding session for young people.

    Both Yolanda (US) and Lenandlar (Guyana) emphasised the importance of providing opportunities for digital making, allowing students opportunities to become creators rather than just consumers of technology. They also highly recommended providing relevant contexts for computing and identifying links with different careers.

    The panellists also discussed the importance of partnering with other education settings, with tech companies, and with non-profit organisations to provide access to equipment and opportunities for students in schools that have limited budgets and capacity for computing. These links can also highlight key role models and help to build strong relationships in the community between businesses and schools.

    What is the role of non-formal settings in low-income areas?

    All of the panellists agreed that non-formal settings provided opportunities for further exploration and skill development outside of a strict curriculum. Christina (UK) particularly highlighted that these settings helped support young people and families who feel left behind by the education system, allowing them to develop practical skills and knowledge that can help their whole family. She emphasised the strong relationships that can be developed in these settings and how these can provide relatable role models for young people in low-income areas.

    A young girl uses a computer.

    Tips and suggestions

    After the presentation, the panelists responded to the audience’s questions with some practical tips and suggestions for engaging young people in low-income communities with computing:

    How do you engage young people who are non-native English speakers with mainly English computing materials?

    • For curriculum materials, it’s possible to use Google Translate to allow students to access them. The software is not always totally accurate but goes some way to supporting these students. You can also try to use videos that have captioning and options for non-English subtitles.
    • We offer translated versions of our free online projects, thanks to a community of dedicated volunteer translators from around the world. Learners can choose from up to 30 languages (as shown in the picture below).
    The Raspberry Pi Foundation's projects website, with the drop-down menu to choose a human language highlighted.
    Young people can learn about computing in their first language by using the menu on our projects site.

    How do you set up partnerships with other organisations?

    • Follow companies on social media and share how you are using their products or tools, and how you are aligned with their goals. This can form the basis of future partnerships.
    • When you are actively applying for partnerships, consider the following points:
      • What evidence do you have that you need support from the potential partner?
      • What support are you asking for? This may differ across potential partners, so make sure your pitch is relevant and tailored to a specific partner.
      • What evidence could you use to show the impact you are already having or previous successful projects or partnerships?

    Make use of our free training resources and guides

    For anyone wishing to learn computing knowledge and skills, and the skills you need to teach young people in and out of school about these topics, we provide a wide range of free online training courses to cover all your needs. Educators in England can also access the free CPD that we and our consortium partners offer through the National Centre for Computing Education.

    To help you support your learners in and out of school to engage with computing in ways that are meaningful and relevant for them, we recently published a guide on culturally relevant teaching.

    We also support a worldwide network of volunteers to run CoderDojos, which are coding clubs for young people in local community spaces. Head over to the CoderDojo website to discover more about the free materials and help we’ve got for you.

    We would like to thank our panellists Lenandlar Singh, Yolanda Payne, and Christina Watson for sharing their time and expertise, and the Tapia conference organisers for providing a great platform to discuss issues of diversity, equality, and inclusion in computing.


    *UK Youth is a leading charity working across the UK with an open network of over 8000 youth organisations. The charity has influence as a sector-supporting infrastructure body, a direct delivery partner, and a campaigner for social change.

    Website: LINK

  • Introducing raspberrypi.com

    Introducing raspberrypi.com

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I am delighted to announce the launch of raspberrypi.com — a new website dedicated to Raspberry Pi computers and associated technologies. Head on over to find all about our low-cost, high-performance PCs, add-on boards or HATs, microcontrollers, accessories, and much more. 

    As well as being able to learn about and purchase the full range of hardware products, on the new website you can download our latest software, find detailed technical documentation, connect with the community on the forums, and read the latest news about Raspberry Pi technologies and how they’re being used to change the world. 

    What’s changing at raspberrypi.org

    This website (raspberrypi.org) will continue to be the home for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and all of our educational initiatives to help young people learn about computers and how to create with digital technologies.

    That includes online resources to help young people learn how to code, information about our networks of Code Clubs and CoderDojos, training and support for teachers and other educators, and access to the world’s leading-edge research into computing education.

    You’ll still be able to find loads of resources about Raspberry Pi computers in education, and cool opportunities for young people to learn how to code and create with Raspberry Pi technologies, whether that’s our space programme Astro Pi, or building robots with Raspberry Pi Pico.

    Why the change?

    When raspberrypi.org was first launched as a WordPress blog in 2011, we were talking about a low-cost, programmable computer that was being designed for education. 

    Fast-forward a decade, and we are now speaking about an increasingly broad range of technology and education products and services to industry, hobbyists, educators, researchers, and young people. While there is lots of overlap between those communities and their interests, it is becoming increasingly difficult to address everyone’s needs on one website. So this change is really all about making life easier for you. 

    We will continue to provide lots of links and connections between the two sites to make sure that you can easily find what you’re looking for. As ever, we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below. 

    Connect with us on our new social media channels

    Alongside the changes to the websites, we’re also launching new social channels that are focused on the Foundation’s educational initiatives. We look forward to seeing you there.

    Website: LINK

  • The First Arduino Education Inspiration Lab

    The First Arduino Education Inspiration Lab

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino TeamSeptember 24th, 2021

    Arduino Education is delighted to announce its very first Inspiration Lab, in partnership with Technobel in Belgium.

    What is an Arduino Education Inspiration Lab?

    Inspiration Labs are an exciting new concept designed for students and educators to get hands-on experience. with the joy of making new discoveries. They’ll explore, design and learn electronics, coding, and programming with real-world connections. It’s all about enhancing future skills, having fun, and the joy of making new discoveries.

    Technobel is a training and vocational center in Ciney, Belgium. Together we’ve created a dedicated space for teachers and students to learn with the full range of Arduino Education products in an engaging, exciting environment.

    Arduino and Technobel Inspiration Lab

    What can you do at the Inspiration Lab?

    There’s something for everyone at the Inspiration Lab.

    • A dedicated space within Technobel, accessible to the public.
    • Teacher training with workshops on Arduino Education solutions; on demand, and on- or off-site.
    • Teacher coaching on how to create new lessons, with an emphasis on community sharing.
    • Specialized courses for 15 to 18-year-old students with official Arduino certification.

    What Can You Learn at the Inspiration Lab?

    As well as exploring, designing, discovering and learning electronics, coding and programming, the Inspiration Lab offers the following.

    • Promote a culture of technological innovation and development.
    • Create an advanced technology facility that supports product innovation and design.
    • Provide mentorship and certification programs for teachers and students.
    • Help develop design-focused thinking, product design and innovation skills through technical support and training.
    • Incubate product ideas to help realize them as real-world commercial products.
    • Prepare students to participate and compete in Arduino Technology challenges and competitions across the globe.

    Find out more and to book your space, visit the website now.

    Website: LINK

  • Keeping things creative: Real-world learning from a remote perspective

    Keeping things creative: Real-world learning from a remote perspective

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Keeping things creative: Real-world learning from a remote perspective

    Arduino TeamSeptember 22nd, 2021

    Teaching students complex concepts from a remote distance is something that many educators have had to get to grips with over the last 18 months. Especially where engineering is concerned. Keeping things hands-on and with a strong connection to real-world scenarios is vitally important for students to progress. 

    We recently discovered this MathWorks mechatronics article by Mojtaba Azadi at the San Francisco State University. Azadi was able to create several different types of drawing robots using the Arduino Education Engineering Kit. Aiming to foster independent confidence and strengthen the skills and abilities of students, this project is perfect for those teaching outside of the classroom setting or when running courses online.

    How to teach mechatronics remotely

    In Azadi’s project design, the robot itself uses core components from the Arduino Engineering Kit, including DC motors, pulleys, servos and a USB camera. The robot uses the motors attached to the pulleys to move itself across a whiteboard. Over several weeks during the course, students can develop a program where the robot can replicate an image placed in front of the USB camera.

    Throughout the project, students utilize essential skills such as planning on a tight schedule, monitoring progress using a Gantt chart, and gaining confidence in their ability to communicate. All while maintaining a hands-on, real-world connection.

    Learning from home with Arduino Education

    There are three Arduino Education kits that support remote learning as well as in-class teaching; the Engineering Kit, the Explore IoT Kit for high school students, and the Student Kit, which is aimed at middle school students. 

    These kits, like all Arduino Education kits, also offer a wealth of online learning materials that assist both educators and students in the creation and approach of many different projects. There are also countless forums and resources that are readily available for members of the Arduino community. 

    The added benefits of all Arduino Education kits are their versatility and the fact that each one can lend itself to many different experiments that grow in scale and complexity as students learn. 

    Explore the potential of Arduino for learning: discover our different education kits.

    Website: LINK

  • New free resources for young people to become independent digital makers

    New free resources for young people to become independent digital makers

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Our mission at the Raspberry Pi Foundation is to help learners get creative with technology and develop the skills and confidence they need to make things that matter to them using code and physical computing. One of the ways in which we do this is by offering learners a catalogue of more than 250 free digital making projects! Some of them have been translated into 30 languages, and they can be used with or without a Raspberry Pi computer.

    Over the last 18 months, we’ve been developing an all-new format for these educational projects, designed to better support young people who want to learn coding, whether at home or in a coding club, on their digital making journey.

    An illustration of the 3-2-1 structure of the new Raspberry Pi Foundation coding project paths.
    Our new free learning content for young people who want to create with technology has a 3-2-1 structure (click the image to enlarge)

    Supporting learners to become independent tech creators

    In the design process of the new project format, we combined:

    • Leading research
    • Experience of what works in Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and our other programmes for young people
    • Feedback from you in the community!

    While designing the new format for our free projects, we found that, as well as support and opportunities to practise while acquiring new skills and knowledge, learners need a learning journey that lets them gradually develop and demonstrate increasing independence.

    Therefore, each of our new learning paths is designed to scaffold learners’ success in the early stages, and then lets them build upon this learning by providing them with more open-ended tasks and inspirational ideas that learners can adapt or work from. Each learning path is made up of six projects, and the projects become less structured as learners progress along the path. This allows learners to practise their newly acquired skills and use their creativity and interests to make projects that matter to them. In this way, learners develop more and more independence, and when they reach the final project in the path, they are presented with a simple project brief. By this time they have the skills, practice, and confidence to meet this brief any way they choose!

    The four new paths we’re sharing with you today focus on the Scratch language (including a physical computing path!), with a Python and a web development path coming very soon, and even more learning content in development.

    Our new path structure for learning coding and digital making

    When a learner is ready to develop a new set of coding skills, they choose one of our new paths to embark on. Each path is made up of three different types of projects in a 3-2-1 structure:

    • The first three Explore projects introduce learners to a set of skills and knowledge, and provide step-by-step instructions to help learners develop initial confidence. Throughout these projects, learners have lots of opportunity to personalise and tinker with what they’re creating.
    • The next two Design projects are opportunities for learners to practise the skills they learned in the previous Explore projects, and to express themselves creatively. Learners are guided through creating their own version of a type of project (such as a musical instrument, an interactive pet, or a website to support a local event), and they are given code examples to choose, combine, and customise. No new skills are introduced in these projects, so that learners can focus on practising and on designing and creating a project based on their own preferences and interests.
    • In the final one Invent project, learners focus on completing a project to meet a project brief for a particular audience. The project brief is written so that they can meet it using the skills they’ve learned by following the path up to this point. Learners are provided with reference material, but are free to decide which skills to use. They need to plan their project and decide on the order to carry out tasks.

    As a result of working through a path, learners are empowered to make their own ideas and create solutions to situations they or their communities face, with increased independence. And in order to develop more skills, learners can work through more paths, giving them even more choice about what they create in the future.

    More features for an augmented learning experience

    We’ve also introduced some new features to add interactivity, choice, and authenticity to each project in a path:

    • Real-world info box-outs provide interesting and relevant facts about the skills and knowledge being taught.
    • Design decision points allow learners to make choices about how their project looks and what it does, based on their preferences and interests.
    • Debugging tips throughout each project give learners guidance for finding and fixing common coding mistakes.
    • Project reflection steps solidify new knowledge and provide opportunities for mastery by letting learners revisit the important learnings from the project. Common misconceptions are highlighted, and learners are guided to the correct answer.
    • At the start of each project, learners can interact with example creations from the community, and at the end of a project, they are encouraged to share what they’ve made. Thus, learners can find inspiration in the creations of their peers and receive constructive feedback on their own projects.
    • An open-ended upgrade step at the end of each project offers inspiration for young people to give them ideas for ways in which they could continue to improve upon their project in the future.

    Access the new free learning content now

    You can discover our new paths on our projects site right now!

    We’ll be adding more content regularly, including completely new Python programming and web development paths coming very soon!

    As always, we’d love to know what you think: here’s a feedback form for you to share comments you have about our new content!

    For feedback specific to an individual project, you can use the feedback link in the footer of that project’s page as usual.

    Website: LINK

  • Sharing Arduino Education courses is easier than ever

    Sharing Arduino Education courses is easier than ever

    Reading Time: 4 minutes
    Arduino Classroom 2

    Over the past few years, Arduino Education has expanded, offering new learning solutions to teachers and students around the world. Today, we have more than 10 kits with exciting online courses for STEM teachers and learners ranging from middle school to university.

    When creating these products, we were delighted to collaborate with many brilliant educators, who shared with us their unique teaching styles and provided valuable feedback. 

    With the pandemic dramatically shaking up the status quo in education, we now have more learning styles than ever. From large schools using hundreds of Arduino kits to smaller classes and study groups. There are even a lot of parents who use kits for homeschooling, along with an increasing numbers of self-learners. 

    We’re excited to see Arduino Education products being enjoyed in so many different ways, and want to make sure our kits are easy to use and share in every situation. That said, we’re excited to announce several changes to how our educational products are shared.

    Personal courses vs. Classroom courses

    Personal courses vs. Classroom courses

    From now on, when you register an Arduino Education kit, the online courses associated with it will be added to your personal collection, accessible via “My Courses” in the profile menu. Courses in your personal collection are only visible to you. This way, if you’re learning by yourself, you have a quick and easy way to access all your learning resources in one place.

    If you’re learning together with others, or you’re an educator managing a group of students, you can now set up a classroom. This will create a second collection of products which you can share with other people. You can switch between the different product collections anytime, and transfer products between them. 

    Setting up an Arduino Classroom

    Setting up a classroom

    Setting up a classroom takes a matter of minutes. Simply add a few details about yourself and your teaching environment and choose which products you want to share with others.

    Once your classroom is set up, you can start inviting students and other educators to join. 

    Everyone who joins will immediately get access to all online courses that you add to your classroom.

    Using the classroom system, you can now share any Arduino Education product with any number of people, and as the classroom admin, you are in full control of who can access your courses, meaning you can add and remove new members anytime. 

    Teacher and admin roles in Arduino Classroom

    Teacher and admin roles

    When you set up a classroom, you become its admin. You have the power to change settings and control the member list and available courses. When you invite your colleagues, you can choose if they should also be an admin, or take the teacher role. 

    Teachers can add and remove students from the classroom, but cannot manage other educators or change classroom settings. Both admins and teachers will see the educator version of the online content, with educator tips, logbooks and more. Roles can be changed whenever you need, and you can have multiple admins at the same time. 

    We hope these changes will provide better administration possibilities to institutions with multiple collaborating educators. 

    Arduino Classroom Safety for our youngest learners

    Safety for our youngest learners

    When working on these updates, we wanted to make sure that the system is usable and safe even for our youngest users. If your students are too young to have an inbox, you can invite them by sharing a classroom code. This way, they can join your classroom without using an email address. 

    If your students are under the age of 14, you can also be sure they’re in a safe online space. They’ll only encounter child-safe content, and their accounts will be anonymized, with no personal data collected. 

    We hope these changes will make learning with Arduino Education easier, safer, and more flexible, and we can’t wait to share with you what’s coming next!

    If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Head on over to Arduino Classroom right here.

    Happy learning!

    Website: LINK

  • Delivering a culturally relevant computing curriculum: new guide for teachers

    Delivering a culturally relevant computing curriculum: new guide for teachers

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    In computing education, designing equitable and authentic learning experiences requires a conscious effort to take into account the characteristics of all learners and their social environments. Doing this allows teachers to address topics that are relevant to a diverse range of learners. To support computing and computer science teachers with this work, we’re now sharing a practical guide document for culturally responsive teaching in schools.

    We need to make computing culturally relevant

    Making computing culturally relevant means that learners with a range of cultural identities will be able to identify with the examples chosen to illustrate computing concepts, to engage effectively with the teaching methods, and to feel empowered to use computing to address problems that are meaningful to them and their communities. This will enable a more diverse group of learners to feel that they belong in computing and encourage them to choose to continue with it as a discipline in qualifications and careers.

    Such an approach can empower all our students and support their skills and understanding of the integral role that computing can play in promoting social justice.

    Yota Dimitriadi, Associate Professor at the University of Reading, member of the project working group

    We introduced our work on this new document to you previously here on the blog. Check out the previous blog post to find out more about the project’s funding and background, and the external working group of teachers and academics we brought together to develop the guide.

    Some shared definitions

    To get the project off to the best start possible once we had assembled the working group, we first spent time drawing on research from the USA and discussing within the working group to come to a shared understanding of key terms:

    • Culture: A person’s knowledge, beliefs, and understanding of the world, which are affected by multiple personal characteristics, as well as social and economic factors.
    • Culturally relevant pedagogy: A framework for teaching that emphasises the importance of incorporating and valuing all learners’ knowledge, ways of learning, and heritage, and that promotes critical consciousness in teachers and learners.
    • Culturally responsive teaching: A range of teaching practices that draw on learners’ personal experiences and cultural identities to make learning more relevant to them, and that support the development of critical consciousness.
    • Social justice: The extent to which all members of society have a fair and equal chance to participate in all aspects of social life, develop to their full potential, contribute to society, and be treated as equals.
    • Equity: The extent to which different groups in society have access to particular activities or resources. To ensure that opportunities for access and participation are equal across different groups.

    To bring in the voices of young people into the project, we asked teachers in the working group to consult with their learners to understand their perspectives on computing and how schools can engage more diverse groups of learners in elective computer science courses. The main reason that learners reported for being put off computing: complex or boring lessons of coding activities with a focus on theory rather than on practical outcomes. Many said that they were inspired by tasks such as producing their own games and suggested that early experiences in primary school and Key Stage 3 had been very important for their engagement in computing.

    Curriculum, teaching approaches, and learning materials

    The guide shows you that a culturally relevant pedagogy applies in three aspects of education, which we liken to a tree to indicate how these aspects connect to each other: the tree’s root system, the basis of culturally relevant pedagogy, is the focus of the curriculum; the tree’s trunk and branches are the teaching approaches taken to deliver the curriculum; the learning materials, represented by the tree’s crown of leaves, are the most widely visible aspect of computing lessons.

    A tree with the roots labeled 'curriculum, the trunk labeled 'teaching approaches', and the crown labeled 'learning materials'.

    Each aspect plays an important role in culturally relevant pedagogy:

    • Within the curriculum, it is important to think about the contexts in which computing concepts are taught, and about you make connections with issues that are meaningful to your learners
    • Equitable teaching approaches, such as open-ended, inquiry-led activities and discussion-based collaborative tasks, are key if you want to provide opportunities for all your learners to express their ideas and their identities through computing
    • Finally, inclusive representations of a range of cultures, and making learning materials accessible, are both of great importance to ensure that all your learners feel that computing is relevant to them

    You can download the guide on culturally relevant pedagogy for computing teachers now to explore the resources provided:

    • You’ll find a lot more information, practical tips, and links to resources to support you to implement culturally relevant pedagogy in all these aspects of your teaching
    • The document links to different available curricula, and we have highlighted materials we’ve created for the Teach Computing Curriculum that promote key aspects of the approach
    • We’ve also included links to academic papers and books if you want to learn more, as well as to videos and courses that you can use for professional development

    What was being part of the working group like?

    One of the teachers who was part of the working group is Joe Arday from Woodbridge High School in Essex, UK. Joe originally worked in the technology sector and has been teaching computing for ten years. We asked him about his experience of being part of the project and how he plans to use the guide in his own classroom practice:

    “It has been an absolute privilege to play a part in working towards producing the guide that my own children will be beneficiaries of when they are studying the computing curriculum throughout their education. I have been able to reflect on how to further improve my teaching practice and pedagogy to ensure that the curriculum taught is culturally diverse and caters for all learners that I teach. (Also, having the opportunity to work with academics from both the UK and US has made me think about becoming an academic in the field of computing at some point in the future!)”

    Computer science teacher Joe Arday.

    Joe also says: “I plan to review the computing curriculum taught in my computing department and sit down with my colleagues to work on how we can implement the guide in our units of work for Key Stages 3 to 5. The guide will also help my department to work towards one of my school’s aims to encourage an anti-racism community and curriculum in my school.“

    Continuing the work

    We hope you find this resource useful for your own practice, and for conversations within your school and network of fellow educators! Please spread the word about the guide to anyone in your circles who you think might benefit.

    We plan to keep working with learners on their perspectives on culturally relevant teaching, and to develop professional development opportunities for teachers, initially in conjunction with a small number of schools. As always with our research projects, we will investigate what works well and share all our findings widely and promptly.

    Many thanks to the teachers and academics in the working group for being wonderful collaborators, to the learners who contributed their time and ideas, and to Hayley Leonard and Diana Kirby from our team for all the time and energy they devoted to this project!

    Working group

    Joseph Arday, FCCT, Woodbridge High School, Essex, UK

    Lynda Chinaka, University of Roehampton, UK

    Mike Deutsch, Kids Code Jeunesse, Canada

    Dr Yota Dimitriadi, University of Reading, UK

    Amir Fakhoury, St Anne’s Catholic School and Sixth Form College, Hampshire, UK

    Dr Samuel George, Ark St Alban’s Academy, West Midlands, UK

    Professor Joanna Goode, University of Oregon, USA

    Alain Ndabala, St George Catholic College, Hampshire, UK

    Vanessa Olsen-Dry, North Cambridge Academy, Cambridgeshire, UK

    Rohini Shah, Queens Park Community School, London, UK

    Neelu Vasishth, Hampton Court House, Surrey, UK

    Website: LINK

  • The Explore IoT Kit gets a mini-makeover

    The Explore IoT Kit gets a mini-makeover

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino TeamAugust 3rd, 2021

    A year after the Arduino Education Explore IoT Kit launched globally, we’ve been improving the content of the kit and have made a few tweaks and upgrades!

    Since launch, we’ve been working with educators around the world on how we can make the kit even better (because everything can be better, right?) and the invaluable feedback they’ve given us has led to the following updates:

    – An introduction to the tools
    – Software IDE
    – Web editor
    – Libraries
    – IoT Cloud
    – Troubleshooting

    • Simpler sign-in functionality
    • Explanations of the benefits of teaching the Internet of Things to high school students right now

    We’ve also dived deeper into how the Explore IoT Kit can help students get career-ready, with new examples and illustrations that show how the kit helps develop the future skills the world will need, especially in the IT sector.

    Innovate, create, transform: Take your first steps in building internet-connected objects and explore the Internet of Things with Arduino Education.

    Website: LINK

  • Amazing science from the winners of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2020/21

    Amazing science from the winners of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2020/21

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation and ESA Education are excited to announce the winners and highly commended Mission Space Lab teams of the 2020/21 European Astro Pi Challenge!

    ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet with the Astro Pi computers aboard the International Space Station
    ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet floating aboard the International Space Station with the two Astro Pi computers

    In Mission Space Lab, teams of young people aged up to 19 create scientific experiments that run on the International Space Station’s two Astro Pi computers — space-hardened Raspberry Pis with cameras and an array of sensors.

    In the final phase of Mission Space Lab, teams analyse the data captured during their experiment’s three-hour runtime on the ISS and write a short report describing their experiment’s hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions.

    The Maldives shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    The Maldives as captured by the Mechabot team

    You can read the best reports below! From 154 final reports, the Astro Pi team has now chosen 10 winners and 5 highly commended teams that have each demonstrated great scientific merit and innovative use of the Astro Pi hardware.

    Our winning teams are…

    Zeus from Tudor Vianu National College of Computer Science in Romania, who used photos of Earth captured by the Astro Pi’s camera, historical data sets, and machine learning to develop a weather forecast system that predicts meteorological phenomena on Earth.

    Mag-AZ from Escola Secundária Domingos Rebelo in Portugal, who attempted to create an algorithm that could calculate the location of the magnetic poles of any planet or star by using the Astro Pi’s sensors to map Earth’s magnetic fields.

    Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan as captured by the Jupiter team

    Atlantes from Niubit Coding Club in Spain, who used a sonification process to convert data captured by the Astro Pi’s sensors into music, inspired by Commander Chris Hadfield’s performance of Space Oddity on the ISS in 2013. You can see more about their experiment here.

    Mateii from Saint Sava National College in Romania, who investigated the potential growth of Aspergillus and Penicillium mold on the ISS in comparison to on Earth using a simulation model and Astro Pi sensor readings taken inside the Columbus module.

    The River Nile in Egypt seen by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    The river Nile in Egypt as captured by the Mechabot team

    Juno from Institut d’Altafulla in Spain, who attempted to determine how much heat the astronauts aboard the ISS experience by using temperature, pressure, and humidity data captured by the Astro Pi’s sensors together with psychrometric calculations.

    Albedo from Lycée Albert Camus in France, who investigated albedo on Earth, using photos captured by the Astro Pi’s camera to classify cloud, land, and sea coverage, and analysing their corresponding albedo values.

    The river Nile in Sudan shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    The river Nile in Sudan as captured by the Spacepi2 team

    SpaceRad from Centrum Nauki Keplera – Planetarium Wenus in Poland, who also investigated albedo (the proportion of light or radiation that is reflected by a surface) on Earth to evaluate the efficacy of using solar farms to combat climate change.

    Magtrix from The Leys School in the United Kingdom, who analysed whether geographical features of Earth such as mountains affect the planet’s magnetic field using the Astro Pi’s magnetometer, GPS data, and photos of Earth captured by the Astro Pi’s camera.

    Newfoundland and Labrador shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    Newfoundland and Labrador as captured by the SpaceRad team

    Mechabot from Robone Robotics Club in Germany, who investigated how the Earth’s magnetic field correlates with its climate, and how this affects near-Earth objects’ behaviour in low-Earth orbit.

    Spacepi2 from Zanneio Model High School in Greece, who investigated urbanisation on Earth by comparing photos captured by the Astro Pi’s camera with historical data using an automated photo classification program they created and NDVI analysis.

    Sakhalin Oblast in Russia shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    Sakhalin Oblast in Russia as captured by the Liontech team

    Highly commended teams

    Bergson from Lycée Henri-Bergson Paris in France, who built an AI model predicting nitrogen dioxide pollution levels on Earth using NDVI analysis of photos taken by the Astro Pi’s camera.

    The Tiwi Islands off the coast of Northern Australia shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    The Tiwi Islands off the coast of Northern Australia as captured by the Magtrix team

    LionTech from Mihai Eminescu National College, Oradea in Romania, who attempted to measure the velocity of the ISS in orbit, and also created an algorithm to detect smoke, pollution, and types of cloud coverage in the images they captured using the Astro Pi’s camera.

    RosSpace from Ceo Boecillo in Spain, who are the third team in our list to have investigated Earth’s albedo levels in relation to global warming using photo analysis. A popular theme this year!

    The Amur River and Sea of Oghotsk in Eastern Russia shown from space by an Astro Pi computer on the International Space Station
    The Amur river and the Sea of Oghotsk (right) in Eastern Russia as captured by the Zeus team

    Jupiter from Institut d’Altafulla in Spain, who looked at variations in the current surface area of water bodies on Earth compared to historical records as an indicator of climate change.

    And a special mention for:

    Ultrafly from Ultrafly Coding Club in Canada, who were the youngest team to make the highly commended list this year, with an average age of 8! Their experiment explored whether the environmental variables on the ISS created allergy-friendly living conditions for the astronauts on board.

    The prize? A special webinar with ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano

    Every Astro Pi team that reached Phase 2 of Mission Space Lab by having their experiment idea accepted this year will receive participation certificates recognising their achievement, and the winners and highly commended teams will receive special certificates and an additional prize.

    The prize for this year’s winners and highly commended teams is the chance to pose their questions to ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano during a webinar in September! We’ll shortly email the teams’ mentors the instructions for submitting their teams’ questions to Luca.

    ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano floating aboard the ISS with two Astro Pi computers
    ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano floating aboard the ISS with the two Astro Pi computers

    This Q&A event for the finalists will conclude this year’s European Astro Pi Challenge. It’s been an incredible year for the Challenge, with 15756 young people from 23 countries participating in Mission Zero or Mission Space Lab.

    Everyone on the Raspberry Pi and ESA Education teams congratulates this year’s participants for their efforts, especially given the obstacles many teams had to overcome due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Thank you and congratulations to everyone who has taken part — we hope you found it as fun and inspiring as we did!

    We can’t wait to welcome you back for the next European Astro Pi Challenge!

    While this year’s Challenge is coming to an end, the European Astro Pi Challenge will return with both Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab in September!

    Logo of the European Astro Pi Challenge

    We invite all teachers, educators, club leaders, and young people who love coding and space science to follow our updates on astro-pi.org and the Astro Pi Twitter account to make sure you don’t miss any announcements.

    Website: LINK

  • Celebrating the community: Avye

    Celebrating the community: Avye

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We’re excited to share another incredible story from the community — the second in our new series of inspirational short films that celebrate young tech creators across the world.

    A young teenager with glasses smiles
    Avye discovered robotics at her local CoderDojo and is on a mission to get more girls like her into tech.

    These stories showcase some of the wonderful things that young people are empowered to do when they learn how to create with technology. We hope that they will inspire many more young people to get creative with technology too!

    Meet Avye

    This time, you will meet an accomplished, young community member who is on a quest to encourage more girls to join her and get into digital making.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfaXHin_eLw?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Help us celebrate Avye by liking and sharing her story on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook!

    For as long as she can remember, Avye (13) has enjoyed creating things. It was at her local CoderDojo that seven-year-old Avye was introduced to the world of robotics. Avye’s second-ever robot, the Raspberry Pi–powered Voice O’Tronik Bot, went on to win the Hardware category at our Coolest Projects UK event in 2018.

    A girl shows off a robot she has built
    Avye showcased her Raspberry Pi–powered Voice O’Tronik Bot at Coolest Projects UK in 2018.

    Coding and digital making have become an integral part of Avye’s life, and she wants to help other girls discover these skills too. She says, I believe that it’s important for girls and women to see and be aware of ordinary girls and women doing cool things in the STEM world.” Avye started running her own workshops for girls in their community and in 2018 founded Girls Into Coding. She has now teamed up with her mum Helene, who is committed to helping to drive the Girls Into Coding mission forwards.

    I want to get other girls like me interested in tech.

    Avye

    Avye has received multiple awards to celebrate her achievements, including the Princess Diana Award and Legacy Award in 2019. Most recently, in 2020, Avye won the TechWomen100 Award, the Women in Tech’s Aspiring Teen Award, and the FDM Everywoman in Tech Award!

    We cannot wait to see what the future has in store for her. Help us celebrate Avye and inspire others by liking and sharing her story on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook!

    Website: LINK

  • Celebrating the community: Zaahra and Eesa

    Celebrating the community: Zaahra and Eesa

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Today we are launching an exciting series of impact stories from the community, to shine a spotlight on some of the young people who are learning and creating with technology through our educational initiatives.

    A sister and brother smiling while doing digital making at a laptop
    Zaahra and Eesa have been learning to create technology through attending Code Club and taking part in Coolest Projects!

    These stories get to the heart of our mission: to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

    Designed in close collaboration with families across the world, our new series of short inspirational films showcases some of the wonderful things that young people are empowered to do when they learn to use technology to address the issues that matter to them.

    We are incredibly proud to be a part of these young people’s journeys — and to see the positive impact of engaging with our free programmes, coding clubs, and resources. We can’t wait to share their unique experiences and achievements with you as we roll out the series over the next few months.

    And we invite you to celebrate these young people by liking and sharing their stories on social media!

    Meet Zaahra and Eesa 

    The first story takes you to a place not far from our home: London, UK.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_nCVvpp1NE?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Help us celebrate Zaahra and Eesa by liking and sharing their story on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook!

    Zaahra (12) and Eesa (8) are a sister and brother coding team and live in East London. For the last four years they’ve been learning about computing and digital making by attending regular sessions at their local Code Club. Zaahra and Eesa love working as a team and using technology to solve problems around them. When they found it difficult to communicate with their grandparents in their first language, Sylheti, the siblings decided to code a language learning app called ‘Easy Sylheti’. Eesa says, “We wanted to create something that was helpful to us, but also to our family and the community.”

    A girl and boy standing on the grass in a park

    When Zaahra and Eesa decided to take part in the Coolest Projects online tech showcase with their app, they never expected that it would be picked as a favourite by Coolest Projects special judge Eben Upton, CEO and co-inventor of Raspberry Pi!

    “I’ve discovered that I’m capable of a lot more than I thought.”

    Zaahra

    Describing the effect of learning to create with technology and seeing the success of their app, Zaahra declares, “I’ve discovered that I’m capable of a lot more than I thought.” And she’s using her new-found confidence to continue helping her community: Zaahra has recently taken up a role as youth member on the Newham Youth Empowerment Fund Panel.

    Help us celebrate Zaahra and Eesa by liking and sharing their story on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook!

    Website: LINK

  • The digital divide: interactions between socioeconomic disadvantage and computing education

    The digital divide: interactions between socioeconomic disadvantage and computing education

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Digital technology is developing at pace, impacting us all. Most of us use screens and all kinds of computers much more than we did five years ago. The total number of apps downloaded globally each quarter has doubled since 2015, reflecting both increased smartphone penetration and the increasingly prominent role of apps in our lives. However, access to digital technology and the internet is not yet equal: there is still a ‘digital divide’, i.e. some people do not have as much access to digital technologies as others, if any at all.

    This month we welcomed Dr Hayley Leonard and Thom Kunkeler at our research seminar series, to present findings on ‘Why the digital divide does not stop at access: understanding the complex interactions between socioeconomic disadvantage and computing education’. Both Hayley and Thom work as researchers at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, where we have a focus on increasing our understanding of computing education for all. They shared some results of a research project they’d carried out with a group of young people who benefitted from our Learn at Home campaign.

    Digital inequality: beyond the dichotomy of access

    Hayley introduced some of the existing research and thinking around digital inequality, and Thom presented the results of their research project. Setting the scene, Hayley explained that the term ‘digital divide’ can create a dichotomous have/have-not view of the world, as can the concept of a ‘gap’. However, the research presents a more nuanced picture. Rather than describing digital inequality as purely centred on access to technology, some researchers characterise three levels of the digital divide:

    • Level 1: Access
    • Level 2: Skills (digital skills, internet skills) and uses (what you do once you have access)
    • Level 3: Outcomes (what you achieve)

    This characterisation is useful because it enables us to look beyond access and also towards what happens once people have access to technology. This is where our Learn At Home campaign came in.

    The presenters gave a brief overview of the impact of the campaign, in which the Raspberry Pi Foundation has partnered with 80 youth and community organisations and to date, thanks to generous donors, has given 5100 Raspberry Pi desktop computer kits (including monitors, headphones, etc.) to young people in the UK who didn’t have the resources to buy their own computers.

    Computing, identity, and self-efficacy

    As part of the Learn At Home campaign, Hayley and Thom conducted a pilot study of how young people from underserved communities feel about computing and their own digital skills. They interviewed and analysed responses of fifteen young people, who had received hardware through Learn At Home, about computing as a subject, their confidence with computing, stereotypes, and their future aspirations.

    Thom Kunkeler presents an online slide describing the background and research question of the 'Learn at Home campaign' pilot study: underrepresentation, belonging, identity, archetypes, and the question "How do young people from underserved communities feel about computing and their own digital skills?".
    Click on the image to enlarge it.

    The notion of a ‘computer person’ was used in the interview questions, following work conducted by Billy Wong at the University of Reading, which found that young people experienced a difference between being a ‘computer person’ and ‘doing computing’. The study carried out by Hayley and Thom largely supports this finding. Thom described two major themes that emerged from their analysis: a mismatch between computing and interviewees’ own identities, and low self-indicated self-efficacy.

    Showing that stereotypes still persist of what a ‘computer person’ is like, a 13-year-old female interviewee described them as “a bit smart. Very, very logical, because computers are very logical. Things like smart, clever, intelligent because computers are quite hard.” Four of the interviewees were also more likely to associate a ‘computer person’ with being male.

    Thom Kunkeler presents an online slide of findings of the 'Learn at Home campaign' pilot study. The young people interviewed associated the term 'computing person' with the attributes smart, clever, intelligent, nerdy/geeky, problem-solving ability.
    The young people interviewed associated a ‘computing person’ with the following characteristics: smart, clever, intelligent, nerdy/geeky, problem-solving ability. Click on the image to enlarge it.

    The majority of the young people in the study said that they could be this ’computer person’. Even for those who did not see themselves working with computers in the future, being a ’computer person’ was still a possibility: One interviewee said, “I feel like maybe I’m quite good at using a computer. I know my way around. Yes, you never know. I could be, eventually.”

    Five of the young people indicated relatively low self-efficacy in computing, and thought there were more barriers to becoming a computer person, for example needing to be better at mathematics. 

    In terms of future career goals, only two (White male) participants in the study considered computing as a career, with one (White female) interviewee understanding that choosing computing as a qualification might be important for her future career. This aligns with research into computer science (CS) qualification choice at age 14 in England, explored in a previous seminar, which highlighted the interaction between income, gender, and ethnicity: White girls from lower-income families were more likely to choose a CS qualification than White girls more from more affluent families, while very few Asian, Black, and Chinese girls from low-income backgrounds chose a CS qualification.

    Evaluating computing education opportunities using the CAPE framework

    An interesting aspect of this seminar was how Hayley and Thom situated their work in the relatively new CAPE framework, which describes different levels at which to evaluate computer science education opportunities. The CAPE framework highlights that capacity and access to computing (C and A in the framework) are only part of the challenge of making computer science education equitable; students’ participation (P) in and experience (E) of computing are key factors in keeping them engaged longer-term.

    A diagram illustrating the CAPE framework for assessing computing education opportunities according to four aspects. 1, capacity, which relates to availability of resources. 2, access, which relates to whether learners have the opportunity to engage in the subject. 3, participation, which relates to whether learners choose to engage with the subject. 4, experience, which relates to what the outcome of learners' participation is.
    Socioeconomic status (SES) can affect learner engagement with computing education at four levels set out in the CAPE framework.

    As we develop computing education in the curriculum, we can use the CAPE framework to evaluate our provision. For example, where I’m writing from in England, we have the capacity to teach computing through the availability of professional development training for teachers, fully developed curriculum materials such as the Teach Computing Curriculum, and community support for teachers through organisations such as Computing at School and the National Centre for Computing Education. In terms of access we have an established national curriculum in the subject, but access to it has been interrupted for many due to the coronavirus pandemic. In terms of participation we know that gender and economic status can impact whether young people choose computer science as an elective subject post-14, and taking an intersectional view reveals that the issue of participation is more complex than that. Finally, according to our seminar speakers, young people’s experience of computing education can be impacted by their digital or technological capital, by their self-efficacy, and by the relevance of the subject to their career aspirations and goals. This analysis really enhances our understanding of digital inequality, as it moves us away from the have/have-not language of the digital divide and starts to unpack the complexity of the impacting factors. 

    Although this was not covered in this month’s seminar, I also want to draw out that the CAPE framework also supports our understanding of global computing education: we may need to focus on capacity building in order to create a foundation for the other levels. Lots to think about! 

    If you’d like to find out more about this project, you can read the paper that relates to the research and the impact report of the early phases of the Learn At Home initiative

    If you missed the seminar, you can find the presentation slides on our seminars page and watch the recording of the researchers’ talk:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8mfXaidhfQ?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Join our next seminar

    The next seminar will be the final one in the current series focused diversity and inclusion, which we’re co-hosting with the Royal Academy of Engineering. It will take place on Tuesday 13 July at 17:00–18:30 BST / 12:00–13:30 EDT / 9:00–10:30 PDT / 18:00–19:30 CEST, and we’ll welcome Prof Ron Eglash, a prominent researcher in the area of ethnocomputing. The title of Ron’s seminar is Computing for generative justice: decolonizing the circular economy.

    To join this free event, click below and sign up with your name and email address:

    We’ll email you the link and instructions. See you there!

    This was our 17th research seminar — you can find all the related blog posts here, and download the first volume of our seminar proceedings with contributions from previous guest speakers.

    Website: LINK

  • How do you use data to solve a real-world problem? | Hello World #16

    How do you use data to solve a real-world problem? | Hello World #16

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    In our brand-new issue of Hello World magazine, editor Gemma Coleman speaks to Kate Farrell from Data Education in Schools to discuss the importance of teaching data to help students navigate the world.

    Cover of Hello World magazine issue 16.
    The big theme of issue 16 of Hello World is data science and data literacy, and on how to teach those topics to your students.

    When I was searching for contributors for this issue of Hello World, a pattern quickly began to emerge: “Data? You want to speak to Kate.” Kate Farrell is director of curriculum development and professional learning on the Data Education in Schools project, part of the Data-Driven Innovation Skills Gateway in Scotland. With the project developing teaching materials, professional development, and even qualifications for schools that want to teach data education to learners aged 3–18, “It’s not the kind of role that fits easily on a business card,” she laughs.

    Kate Farrell.
    Kate Farrell

    The project started in 2019, with the team looking at the Scottish curriculum and mapping out where data could be embedded and how it could be used to support various subjects. “We know that teachers are under stress and won’t be able to deliver extra stuff, so we’re looking to understand how we get better at doing data literacy within the rest of the curriculum,” Kate explains. “How do we provide and support opportunities to look at data in the rest of the curriculum in cool new ways?”

    “We like taking topics that you wouldn’t instantly think are about data science.”

    The team runs monthly seminars drawing upon this theme, to help teachers see its applicability across all subjects. “We like taking topics that you wouldn’t instantly think are about data science. Yes, the sciences, computer science, and maths are where you would expect it, but there are huge amounts of data and data use in geography, music, social studies, and even PE.”

    One example is the DataFit series of lessons for upper primary and lower secondary students, with a mission to simultaneously increase data literacy and physical activity literacy. This includes an introduction to activity-monitoring devices, such as step counters on phones. The lesson has the twin aims of teaching students how monitoring steps or sleep activity can be a positive thing, and also encouraging them to reflect on how they feel about their phone collecting their personal data.

    “A lot of students don’t realise their phone is keeping track of their step count, just by virtue of it sitting in their pockets,” Kate muses. “It’s been interesting to see just how little some learners know about the data that’s being kept and tracked about them.”

    Data Education in Schools ran a similarly themed workshop for students aged 10–11, with a series of events in an imagined Data Town being examined, to investigate how data can impact our lives. The day started by giving each student a cardboard mobile phone on which they could install apps in the form of stickers if they gave the town certain pieces of information about themselves, such as their favourite colour or football team. “Some kids would just install anything, give up any data, because they wanted the stickers – just like many kids will just download any app,” Kate explains. The apps and associated products then developed as they gathered more data, which was then presented back to the students. The purpose was to get students to reflect on how they felt about the products and how they used their data.

    “[…] a series of ‘aha’ moments for students, as they realised what sharing their data meant.”

    Later in the workshop, the mayor of Data Town announced that the town had sold the data to an advertising company who wanted to know people’s favourite colour, and to a gym who wanted to know their fitness data to help them decide the location of a new branch. “This meant a series of ‘aha’ moments for students, as they realised what sharing their data meant. Some of the kids who had opted not to collect the stickers were suddenly very smug!”

    The project keeps a balance in the story it tells about data, with teaching materials encompassing both the risks of data collection and the huge benefits it can bring. “That is our main aim: how can we help learners use data to make their lives and the lives of their communities better — data for social good.” In the Data Town workshop, students also chose to share data with hospitals and researchers, and later found that this had helped them to develop new medicines. “We didn’t just want to send across the message that sharing data is bad. Yes, you can share your data, but be aware who you’re sharing it with, who you’re trusting with it.”

    “How can we help learners use data to make their lives and the lives of their communities better?”

    The materials that Data Education in Schools has produced use a framework called PPDAC: Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis, and Conclusion. This is an established approach to statistical literacy, and using this data problem-solving cycle in a real-world context is a powerful way to engage learners with data topics. “The aim is to empower students with the tools to be campaigning, to be making real-world changes to their lives and their communities using data.”

    Kate gives a simple example of how a class could look at how much plastic their canteen is using, collecting the data on plastic products and then using that data to make the case to reduce their plastic consumption.

    The project has also worked with Scottish exam board SQA to develop a National Progression Award in Data Science; they believe it is the world’s first data science school qualification. The award is aimed at upper secondary students, colleges, and workplaces as an introductory qualification in data science. It carries the same ethos as their materials for younger learners: to help students understand how data is used in society, both negatively and positively, and develop skills to help them make better decisions.

    “We need learners to be able to look at the news, and their social media stream, and question what they’re looking at, or ask: where is the evidence?”

    “I want people to realise that although data science sounds scary, it’s so important to learners’ lives these days. We’ve seen it with the pandemic. Being able to interpret and analyse data is hugely important. We need learners to be able to look at the news, and their social media stream, and question what they’re looking at, or ask: where is the evidence? This is so important, whether or not they go on to become a data scientist… although we’d love it if they did!”

    Subscribe to Hello World for free

    Issue 16 of Hello World focuses on data science and data literacy; it is full of teaching ideas and inspiration to help you and your students use data to make decisions and to make sense of the world. Also in this issue:

    • Key digital skills for young people with SEND
    • Top tips and case studies on how to run a successful computing club
    • Reflections on decolonising the computing curriculum
    • And more

    Subscribe now to get each new digital issue straight to your inbox! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or unpaid work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.

    PS Have you listened to our Hello World podcast yet? Episode 4 has just come out, and it’s great! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

    Website: LINK

  • Sync Google Drive with Arduino Science Journal projects

    Sync Google Drive with Arduino Science Journal projects

    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    Science Journal syncs with Google Drive

    Note: Google Drive is available to all users over the age of 14. This is so we adhere to the COPPA compliance requirements for students under 14-years-old.

    Students and teachers can now sync Google Drive with their Arduino Science Journal experiments. This means you can access experiments from any device using your Arduino account. The brand new Google Drive integration is available through the latest app update.

    Benefits of using Google Drive

    You can benefit from Google Drive sync immediately. Simply sign in with your Arduino account and authenticate the Google Drive connection. Then select the folder where you want to back up your experiments. From then on, all your experiments will be accessible from any devices whenever you log in.

    Sync Google Drive with Arduino Science Journal

    Don’t worry. You’ll still be able to use Arduino Science Journal without logging in. But your experiments won’t be associated with your Arduino account, and will only be locally stored. 

    What else is new?

    You’ll also find new useful links on the sidebar of your app, so learning becomes even simpler. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to access the free Science Journal activities, browse the help center articles, and learn more about the Arduino Science Kit straight from the app.

    The Arduino Science Journal content platform welcomes seven new activities, as well as great new partners and content creators. The Tech Interactive, Alison Green and Isabella Liu have helped us create some amazing new lessons. Check them out here.

    You will be able to experiment with motion and sound, as well as a step-by-step guide to help you access Google Drive on your Science Journal app!

    We’re also delighted that the Arduino Science Journal is certified by the Educational App Store with a 4-star rating! 

    We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of educators with remote teaching, and we strive to make data literacy and scientific thinking more accessible, wherever you are. If you’re an Arduino Science Journal user, you can help out by recommending the app to your fellow educators. And we’d love to hear how you are using the app in your classroom!

    Tag us on social media to show us what you’re working on with #ScienceJournal.

    If you don’t have the app already, join over 700,000 other teachers, students and makers by downloading it now!

    Website: LINK