Raspberry Pi and Custard for Schools

Ok, so this isn't a post about food! but it is a story about a recipe destined for success.

Raspberry Pi is a low cost credit card sized ARM/GNU based single board computer that runs on a Linux Platform and plugs into your TV, just add a mouse and keyboard and a little imagination.  It will be available to buy soon at around £22 for the fully loaded version.  It's the brain child of Eben Upton, who's work as an admissions officer at Cambridge university made him realise that "kids today", were happy to use and play with technology, but not interested in programming or designing it , hence the visible decline year on year of students wishing to study technology based subjects, such as electronics.

(picture of Beta Board)

I think that part of the problem is down to the modern world, a world where the majority kids today aspire to be Rock Stars or Celebrities, rather than Astronauts or Computer Programmers, as it was in my day growing up in the early 1980's.  What most of them probably don't realise is that people like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, were Geeks with more money of their own, than many countries have! and far more than most "celebrities"  So what can we do about this!  Well, Eben was keen to get the kids of today interested in the building blocks of technology, and make a product that would appeal and inspire them, and so, the Raspberry Pi was baked!

To most of us reading this, technology and how it all works is a drug, I'm certainly addicted!, I think the difference between me when I grew up, and the kids of today, is to do with the evolution of technology and modern media.  Inspired by movies like Wargames and Weird Science,  I pretty much had to build my own first computer from a kit, and I learnt how to write Basic on it and I also used it for gaming.  Today, games consoles are just that, you can't write basic on it.... the hours of fun I had writing things like "10 CLS, 20 Print " Pete is Cool!", GOTO 20 on every computer in our local branch of Dixons (electronics shop), so that all the monitors displayed it,and buying computer magazine's featuring programming code examples and spending hours typing them in to run the most basic of programes. Today they are just off the shelf throw away commodities which a monkey could operate.

So this is the problem... there’s no real incentive or easy way for kids today to get introduced and involved in technology and computers at a nuts and bolt level, and if we're not careful, within a generation, electronics hardware and software design could almost disappear from the UK, just as manufacturing almost has.  So taking the technology drug into schools, and getting kids hooked on technology from an early age, seems like the answer!  Now, there are platforms like Arduino around which are great for introducing electronics to beginners, however these type of applications generally require some heavier coding, where as Raspberry Pi is more along the lines of the old school computing from back in the 1980's, when BBC Micro was king and so is easier for a younger user to get to grips with.  Although I understand if you want to, you can open up the Rasperry Pi and do alot more heavy programming on it.

So, Raspberry Pi is a great first step to get kids interested in technology and influence more of them to become electronics design engineers and computer programers of the future. Raspberry PI is in fact a registered Charity, and there are some big old school names involved with the Raspberry Pi project, including Jack Lang, who back in the day, was involved in taking the BBC Micro computer to market. 

The sad thing is, due to the price point required to get this project to fly, it looks like manufacturing this in the UK isn't going to be possible now due to crippling taxes!  Come on David Cameron and Vince Cable! these guys are a charity, don't gamble on the fate of UK Electronics and software engineering, please help these guys manufacture this in the UK, otherwise the custard I refer to in the title of this post may end up as pies in your faces....