Friday, 8 February 2013

Teachers Guide to the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny little computer that costs about £30. It can do most things that a computer can do, but its size and the fact that it is very cheap makes it ideal for electronics projects. It was originally designed to be for the education market, but pretty quickly a lot of hobbyists have seen its potential and used it for everything from a small-scale web servers to brewery controllers. This guide is intended for teachers to help get the most from the device and find all the relevant resources.  There will be plenty more educational resources available as people release them.

Getting Your Pi

The Three official supplier are:

You can buy your Pi from a number of outlets and some come with necessary accessories.  If you buy a plain Pi you will need:
1. an HDMI cable and TV or DVI cable to suitable monitor
2. USB Keyboard and mouse
3. 2GB or larger SD Card. (To set up a card, see: http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup)

Teaching your first lesson with the Pi

Here are the 10 lesson ideas that you might wish to use with a vanilla Raspberry Pi


Programming with Pi

For educational purposes two languages stand out:

There are several books available if you would like something in print:
Enter: RPi for a 40% discount.

Hello World! is another nice book for Python.


Electronics Projects with Pi

This is really where the Pi comes into its own and people have been doing amazing things with the Pi. I wholeheartedly recommend that you have a look at the official Website and forums for examples: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

There are two projects that are really interesting:

  • Pi-Face - By the university of Manchester, simple to use interface
  • Gert Board - Bit more complex, but can get more out of it. Now available assembled. Good tutorial over at Tech Fruits

Other Useful Links






Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)