Connexion
The UK Bebras Challenge is back and ready to accept entries from schools for its annual event, which runs from 6 to 17 November.
More than 3 million students from 59 countries took part in the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge in 2022. In the UK alone, over 365,000 students participated. Read on to find out how you can get your school involved.
“This is now an annual event for our Year 5 and 6 students, and one of the things I actually love about it is the results are not always what you might predict. There are children who have a clear aptitude for these puzzles who find this is their opportunity to shine!”
– Claire Rawlinson, Primary Teacher, Lancashire
Bebras is a free, annual challenge that helps schools introduce computational thinking to their students. No programming is involved, and it’s completely free for schools to enter. All Bebras questions are self-marking.
We’re making Bebras accessible by offering age-appropriate challenges for different school levels and a challenge tailored for visually impaired students. Schools can enter students from age 6 to 18 and know they’ll get interesting and challenging (but not too challenging) activities.
Students aged 10 to 18 who do particularly well will get invited to the Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC).
We want young people to get excited about computing. Through Bebras, they will learn about computational and logical thinking by answering questions and solving problems.
Bebras questions are based on classic computing problems and are presented in a friendly, age-appropriate way. For example, an algorithm-based puzzle for learners aged 6 to 8 is presented in terms of a hungry tortoise finding an efficient eating path across a lawn; for 16- to 18-year-olds, a difficult problem based on graph theory asks students to sort out quiz teams by linking quizzers who know each other.
“This has been a really positive experience. Thank you. Shared results with Head and Head of Key Stage 3. Really useful for me when assessing Key Stage 4 options.”
– Secondary teacher, North Yorkshire
Here’s a Bebras question for the Castors category (ages 8 to 10) from 2021. You will find the answer at the end of this blog.
A robot picks up litter.
Question: Which kind of litter will the robot pick up last?
The Bebras challenge for UK schools takes place from 6 to 17 November. Register at bebras.uk/admin to get free access to the challenge.
By registering, you also get access to the Bebras back catalogue of questions, from which you can build your own quizzes to use in your school at any time during the year. All the quizzes are self-marking, and you can download your students’ results for your mark book. Schools have reported using these questions for end-of-term activities, lesson starters, and schemes of lessons about computational thinking.
The answer to the example puzzle is:
The image below shows the route the robot takes by following the instructions:
The post Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2023 for schools appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Today we share a guest blog from Chris Roffey, who manages the UK Bebras Challenge, a computational thinking challenge we run every year in partnership with the University of Oxford.
Bebras is a free annual challenge that helps schools introduce computational thinking to their learners through online, self-marking tasks. Taking part in Bebras, students solve accessible, interesting problems using their developing computational thinking skills. No programming is involved in taking part. The UK challenge is for school students aged 6 to 18 years old, with a special category for students with severe visual impairments.
While UK schools take part in Bebras throughout two weeks in November, for me the annual cycle starts much earlier. May is the time of the annual Bebras international workshop where the year’s new tasks get decided. In 2022, 60 countries were represented — some online, some in person. For nearly a week, computer scientists and computing teachers met to discuss and work on the new cycle’s task proposals submitted by participating countries a little earlier.
After the workshop, in collaboration with teams from other European countries, the UK Bebras team chose its task sets and then worked to localise, copy-edit, and test them to get them ready for schools participating in Bebras during November. From September, schools across the UK create accounts for their students, with over 360,000 students ultimately taking part in 2022. All in all, more than 3 million students from 59 countries took part in the 2022/2023 Bebras challenge cycle.
In this cycle, the UK Bebras partnership between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the University of Oxford has been extended to include the Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC). This is an invitation-based, online coding challenge for students aged 10 to 18, offered in the UK as well as Australia, Jamaica, and China. We invited the students with the top 10% best results in the UK Bebras challenge to take part in the OUCC — an exciting opportunity for them.
In contrast to Bebras, which doesn’t require participants to do any coding, the OUCC asks students to create code to solve computational thinking problems. This requires students to prepare and challenges them to develop their computational thinking skills further. The two younger age groups, 10- to 14-year-olds, solve problems using the Blockly programming language. The older two age groups can use one of the 11 programming languages that Bebras supports, including all the most common ones taught in UK schools.
Over 20,000 Bebras participants took up the invitation to the first round of the OUCC in the third week of January. Then in March, the top 20 participants from each of the four OUCC age groups took part in the final round. The finalists all did amazingly well. In the first round, many of them had solved all the available tasks correctly, even though the expectation is that participants only try to solve as many as they can within the round’s time limit. In the final round, a few of the finalists managed to repeat this feat with the even more advanced tasks — which is, in modern parlance, literally impossible!
Many of the participants are about to take school exams, so the last stage of the annual cycle — the prize winners’ celebration day— takes place when the exam period has ended. This year we are holding this celebration on Friday 30 June at the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s headquarters in Cambridge. It will be a lovely way to finish the annual Bebras cycle and I am looking forward to it immensely.
The post UK Bebras participants in the Oxford University Computing Challenge appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
This November, teachers across the UK helped 367,023 learners participate in the annual free UK Bebras Challenge of computational thinking.
We support this challenge in the UK, together with Oxford University, and Bebras Challenges run across the world, with more than 3 million learners from schools in 54 countries taking part in 2021. Bebras encourages a love of computational thinking, computer science, and problem solving, especially among learners who haven’t yet realised they have these skills.
Nearly every year since 2013, more UK schools have been participating in Bebras. We think this is because for teachers, registering and entering learners is easy, the online system does all the marking automatically, and teachers receive comprehensive results that can be helpful for assessment.
The computational thinking problems within Bebras are tailored for different age groups, use clear language, and are accessible to colour-blind learners. There is also a challenge for learners with visual impairments. Teachers who run Bebras in their schools seem to love it and regularly tell colleagues about it.
“Our pupils really enjoy [Bebras] and I find it so helpful to teach computational thinking with real-life strategies. We also find the data and information about our pupils’ performance extremely helpful.” — Teacher in London
In the UK Bebras Challenge, the younger learners aged 6 to 10 usually take part in teams and have plenty of time to discuss how to solve the computational thinking problems they are presented with.
Older learners, aged 10 to 18, try to solve as many problems as they can in 40 minutes. The problems they are presented with start off easy and get increasingly difficult. The 10% of participants who solve the most problems are then invited to take part in the Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC), an annual programming challenge.
Although the OUCC is only open to some Bebras participants, all of the OUCC problems are archived and teachers registered with Bebras can use them to make auto-marking quizzes for all of their learners at any time of the year. Part of the goal of UK Bebras is to support teachers with free resources, and the UK Bebras online quizzes facility now has computational thinking tasks from the Bebras archive, plus auto-marking Blockly programming problems and text-based programming problems, which can be solved using commonly taught programming languages.
If you want to get a taste of Bebras, check out some of the interactive challenges that require no registration. And if you’d like to register to make quizzes for your learners and find out about next year’s challenge, you can do so at bebras.uk/admin.
The post Computational thinking all year round with UK Bebras appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
The UK Bebras Challenge is back and ready to accept entries from schools for its annual event from 7 to 18 November.
More than 3 million students from 54 countries took part in the Bebras Challenge in 2021. Read on to find out how you can get your school involved.
Bebras a free, annual challenge that helps schools introduce computational thinking to their students. No programming is involved, and it’s completely free for schools to take part. All Bebras questions are self-marking. Schools can enter students from age 6 to 18 and know they’ll get interesting and challenging (but not too challenging) activities.
“This has been a really positive experience. Thank you. Shared results with head and Head of KS3. Really useful for me when assessing KS4 options.” – Secondary teacher, North Yorkshire
We’re making Bebras accessible by offering age-appropriate challenges for different school levels, and a challenge tailored for visually impaired students.
We want young people to get excited about computing. Through Bebras, they will learn about computational and logical thinking by answering questions and solving puzzles.
Bebras questions are based on classic computing problems and presented in friendly, age-appropriate contexts. For example, an algorithm-based puzzle for learners aged 6 to 8 is presented in terms of a hungry tortoise find an efficient eating path across a lawn; for 16- to 18-year-olds, a difficult question based on graph theory asks students to sort out some quiz teams by linking quizzers who know each other.
Here’s a question from the 2021 challenge for the Junior category (ages 10 to 12). You’ll find the correct answer at the bottom of this blog post.
Question: What is the correct order of events for the science fair?
The Bebras challenge for UK schools takes place from 7 to 18 November. Register at bebras.uk/admin to get full access to the challenge.
By registering, you also get access to the back catalogue of questions, from which you can build your own quizzes to use in your school at any time during the year. All the quizzes are self-marking, and you can download your students’ results for your mark book. Schools have reported using the back catalogue of questions for end-of-term activities, lesson starters, and schemes of lessons about computational thinking.
You can also see more of our free resources for Computing and Computer Science teachers, and find out about our newest research project, which you can get involved in if you teach primary Computing.
There are actually two possible answers to the example puzzle:
| Option 1 | Option 2 |
| Chorus Performance Preparation of Stands Opening Speeches Project Presentations Social Interaction Referee Reviews Awarding Prizes | Preparation of Stands Chorus Performance Opening Speeches Project Presentations Social Interaction Referee Reviews Awarding Prizes |
The post Join the UK Bebras Challenge 2022 for schools appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Back in October, I wrote about a report that the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, had published about the provision of computer science in schools around the world. Brookings conducted a huge amount of research on computer science curricula in a range of countries, and the report gives a very varied picture. However, we believe that, to see a more complete picture, it’s also important to gather teachers’ own perspectives on their teaching.
Experiences shared by teachers on the ground can give important insights to educators and researchers as well as to policymakers, and can be used to understand both gaps in provision and what is working well.
Today we launch a survey for computing teachers across Ireland and the UK. The purpose of this survey is to find out about the experiences of computing teachers across the UK and Ireland, including what you teach, your approaches to teaching, and professional development opportunities that you have found useful. You can access it by clicking one of these buttons:
The survey is:
The survey will be open for four weeks, until 7 March. When you complete the survey, you’ll have the opportunity to enter a prize draw for a £50 book token per week, so if you complete the survey in the first week, you automatically get four chances to win a token!
We’re aiming for 1000 teachers to complete the survey, so please do fill it in and share it with your colleagues. If you can help us now, we’ll be able to share the survey findings on this website and other channels in the summer.
“Computing education in Ireland — as in many other countries — has changed so much in the last decade, and perhaps even more so in the last few years. Understanding teachers’ views is vital for so many reasons: to help develop, inform, and steer much-needed professional development; to inform policymakers on actions that will have positive effects for teachers working in the classroom; and to help researchers identify and conduct research in areas that will have real impact on and for teachers.”
– Keith Quille (Technological University Dublin), member of the research project team
There are key differences in the provision of computer science and computing education across the UK and Ireland, not least what we all call the subject.
In England, the mandatory national curriculum subject is called Computing, but for learners electing to take qualifications such as GCSE and A level, the subject is called computer science. Computing is taught in all schools from age 5, and is a broad subject covering digital literacy as well as elements of computer science, such as algorithms and programming; networking; and computer architecture.
In Northern Ireland, the teaching curriculum involves developing Cross-Curricular Skills (CCS) and Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities. This means that from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the end of key stage 3, “using ICT” is one of the three statutory CCS, alongside “communication” and “using mathematics”, which must be included in lessons. At GCSE and A level, the subject (for those who select it) is called Digital Technology, with GCSE students being able to choose between GCSE Digital Technology (Multimedia) and GCSE Digital Technology (Programming).
In Scotland, the Curriculum for Excellence is divided into two phases: the broad general education (BGE) and the senior phase. In the BGE, from age 3 to 15 (the end of the third year of secondary school), all children and young people are entitled to a computing science curriculum as part of the Technologies framework. In S4 to S6, young people may choose to extend and deepen their learning in computing science through National and Higher qualification courses.
In Wales, computer science will be part of a new Science & Technology area of learning and experience for all learners aged 3-16. Digital competence is also a statutory cross-curricular skill alongside literacy and numeracy; this includes Citizenship; Interacting and collaborating; Producing; and Data and computational thinking. Wales offers a new GCSE and A level Digital Technology, as well as GCSE and A level Computer Science.
Ireland has introduced the Computer Science for Leaving Certificate as an optional subject (age ranges typically from 15 to 18), after a pilot phase which began in 2018. The Leaving Certificate subject includes three strands: practices and principles; core concepts; and computer science in practice. At junior cycle level (age ranges typically from 12 to 15), an optional short course in coding is now available. The short course has three strands: Computer science introduction; Let’s get connected; and Coding at the next level.
The survey is a localised and slightly adapted version of METRECC, which is a comprehensive and validated survey tool developed in 2019 to benchmark and measure developments of the teaching and learning of computing in formal education systems around the world. METRECC stands for ‘MEasuring TeacheR Enacted Computing Curriculum’. The METRECC survey has ten categories of questions and is designed to be completed by practising computing teachers.
Using existing standardised survey instruments is good research practice, as it increases the reliability and validity of the results. In 2019, METRECC was used to survey teachers in England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Australia, and the USA. It was subsequently revised and has been used more recently to survey computing teachers in South Asia and in four countries in Africa.
With sufficient responses, we hope to be able to report on the resources and classroom practices of computing teachers, as well as on their access to professional development opportunities. This will enable us to not only compare the UK’s four devolved nations and Ireland, but also to report on aspects of the teaching of computing in general, and on how teachers perceive the teaching of the subject. As computing is a relatively new subject whatever country you are in, it’s crucial to gather and analyse this information so that we can develop our understanding of the teaching of computing.
For this project, we are working as a team of researchers across the UK and Ireland. Together we have a breadth of experience around the development of computing as a school subject (using this broad term to also cover digital competencies and digital technology) in our respective countries. We also have experience of quantitative research and reporting, and we are aiming to publish the results in an academic journal as well as disseminate them to a wider audience.
In alphabetical order, on the team are:
In addition, Dr Irene Bell, Stranmillis University College, Belfast, has been assisting the team to ensure that the survey is applicable for teachers in Northern Ireland. Keith, Sue, and Elizabeth were part of the original team that designed the survey in 2019.
On this page, you’ll see more information about the survey and our findings once we start analysing the data. You can bookmark the page, as we will keep it updated with the results of the survey and any subsequent publications.
The post Calling all Computing and ICT teachers in the UK and Ireland: Have your say appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
The annual UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge is back to provide fun, brain-teasing puzzles for schools 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
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!
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.
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.
The post Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2021 for schools! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
It’s been a while since we saw a good jukebox retrofit project, so when we saw this old Wurlitzer transformed into a modern, all-in digital jukebox, we had to share it.
Maker Marc Engrie’s cousin came across an old Wurlitzer on a local online second-hand store. The seller had imported it from the US and intended to convert it himself but never got round to it, so he ended up selling it on. Marc’s cousin enticed him with some photos of the Wurlitzer and asked how much it would cost him to breathe new life into the jukebox.
Marc already had three Raspberry Pis at home running music streaming software Volumio, so he felt confident he could harness the power of our tiny computer to bring this classic objet d’art back to life. Adding on hardware costs, he figured he could restore it to its former glory for €600 (about £500).
Once the jukebox was delivered, Marc stripped everything away, including the unfinished work of the previous restorer. The iconic enclosure was all that was left, along with the loudspeakers.
A 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and a Raspberry Pi Touch Display form the new brain and face of the Wurlitzer. HiFiBerry‘s DAC+ Pro allows music to play from a USB stick. Other devices can play music from an auxiliary-in port.
Marc added a 2 x 2-channel audio amp (2 x 100W for the woofers plus 2 x 100W for mid/high). It’s easy to install and uninstall in case the jukebox ever needs repairing.
And as a final modern finishing touch, he swapped all the original lights for LEDs.
Marc is a super diligent maker and has crafted a spreadsheet showing all the hardware, prices, and retailers. You can also get your hands on a comprehensive software setup instructions, as well as a hardware map showing you how all the Wurlitzer’s new insides fit together. Better still, there’s a whole user manual showing you how every single button and switch works. We think his middle name should be ‘Thorough’. Super, top, detailed job, Marc.
Check out more of Marc’s electronics projects here. There’s a weather station, an automated greenhouse, a chicken shed with an automatic door, and more.
The post Raspberry Pi transforms old Wurlitzer into modern digital jukebox appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
The annual UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge for schools, brought to you by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Oxford University, is taking place this November!
The Bebras Challenge is a great way for your students to practise their computational thinking skills while solving exciting, accessible, and puzzling questions. Usually this 40-minute challenge would take place in the classroom. However, this year for the first time, your students can participate from home too!
If your students haven’t entered before, now is a great opportunity for them to get involved: they don’t need any prior knowledge.
Do you have any students who are up for tackling the Bebras Challenge? Then register your school today!
“Thank you for another super challenge. It’s one of the highlights of my year as a teacher. Really, really appreciate the high-quality materials, website, challenge, and communication. Thank you again!”
– A UK-based teacher
Bebras is an international challenge that started in Lithuania in 2004 and has grown into an international 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 260,000 last year! Internationally, nearly 3 million learners took part in 2019.
Bebras is a great way to engage your students of all ages in problem-solving and give them a taste of what computing is all about. In the challenge results, computing principles are highlighted, so Bebras can be educational for you as a teacher too.
The annual Bebras Challenge is only one part of the equation: questions from previous years are available as a resource that you can use to create self-marking quizzes for your classes. You can use these materials throughout the year to help you to deliver the computational thinking part of your curriculum!
The post Join the UK Bebras Challenge 2020 for schools! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
We’re a sentimental bunch and were bowled over by this intricate, musical wedding gift. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi and has various other bits of geeky goodness under the hood. Honestly, the extra features just keep coming — you’ll see.
This beautifully crafted ‘record player’ plays one pair of newlyweds’ Spotify accounts, and there’s a special visual twist when their ‘first dance’ wedding song plays.
Midway through the build process
First, a little background: the newlyweds, Holly and Dougie, have been sweethearts since early highschool days. Their wedding took place on a farm near the village they grew up in, Fintry in rural Scotland.
3 yrs ago my little sister got married. The phrase "Music is a huge deal" was used a LOT in the lead up to the wedding, so I built them a magic record player that links with their @Spotify accounts, using a @Raspberry_Pi , spare timber and a bit of imagination. #throwbackproject pic.twitter.com/0CfYqPVH67
— Ben Howell (@piffleandwhimsy) May 22, 2020
Throughout the wedding day, the phrase “Music is a huge deal” was repeated often, which gave the bride’s older brother Ben Howell the idea for a homemade, Raspberry Pi–powered gift.
Custom tagline laser-cut and spray-painted
He built the couple a neatly finished music box, known as HD-001 (HD for ‘Holly Dougie’ of course) and home to a ‘smart turntable’. It can connect to a wireless network and has a touch screen where the record label would normally sit. When you lift the lid and switch it on, it asks “Hello. Who’s listening?”
Once you tap on the picture of either the bride or groom, it accesses their Spotify account and fetches the album artwork of whatever song it plays.
The main brain is Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspberry Pi OS. The interface is built as a web page in mostly PHP and JavaScript. It uses the Spotify API to get the ‘now playing’ track of the bride’s or groom’s account, and to fish out the album artwork URL from the return data so it can display this on a rotating panel.
The audio side is a powered by a 50W Bluetooth amplifier, which is entirely independent from the Raspberry Pi computer.
The enclosure is all custom-designed and built using scrap wood wrapped in green faux leather material. Ben sourced most of the other materials — rubber feet, hinges, switches, metal grille — on Amazon.
The HD-001 also features a hand-built 4-way speaker system and a custom-made speaker grille with that famous phrase “Music is a huge deal” on the front.
The lettering on the grille was laser-cut by a company in Glasgow to order, and Ben spray-painted it metallic grey. The LCD panel and driver board are also from Amazon.
To play and pause music, Ben sourced a tone-arm online and routed cabling from the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins through to a micro-switch where the original needle should sit. That’s how lifting the arm pauses playback, and replacing it resumes the music.
Getting the audio to work
Ben explains: “Essentially, it’s a fancy Bluetooth speaker system disguised as an old-fashioned turntable and designed to behave and work like an old-fashioned turntable (skeuomorphism gone mad!).”
Oh, and our favourite adorable bonus feature? If the first dance song from Holly’s and Dougie’s wedding is played, the album artwork on the LCD panel fades away, to be replaced by a slideshow of photos from their wedding.
We have it on good authority that Ben will entertain anyone who would like to place a pre-order for the HD-002.
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We are delighted to announce a new partnership that will ensure the long-term growth and success of the free, annual UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge.
‘Bebras’ means ‘beaver’ in Lithuanian; Prof. Valentina Dagiene named the competition after this hard-working, intelligent, and lively animal.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has teamed up with Oxford University to support the Bebras Challenge, which every November invites students to use computational thinking to solve classical computer science problems re-worked into accessible and interesting questions.
Bebras is:
Bebras is an international challenge that started in Lithuania in 2004. Participating in Bebras is a great way to engage students of all ages in the fun of problem solving, and to give them an insight into computing and what it’s all about. Computing principles are highlighted in the answers, so Bebras can be quite educational for teachers too.
The UK became involved in Bebras for the first time in 2013, and the numbers of participating students have increased from 21,000 in the first year to 202,000 last year. Internationally, more than 2.78 million learners took part in 2018.
To give you a taste of what Bebras involves, try this example question!
You’ve still got three more days to sign up for this year’s Bebras Challenge.
The annual challenge is only one part of the equation: questions from previous years are available as a resource with which teachers can create self-marking quizzes to use with their classes! This means you can support the computational thinking part of the school curriculum throughout the whole year.
You can also use the Bebras App to try 100 computational thinking problems, and download sets of Bebras Cards for primary schools.
Follow @bebrasuk to stay up to date with what’s on offer for you.
The post The Raspberry Pi Foundation and Bebras appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
We welcomed a very special guest to Raspberry Pi HQ today.
Our Patron, His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, visited our central Cambridge HQ to meet our team, learn more about our work, and give his support for our mission to help more young people learn how to create with computers.
Avid readers of this blog will know that this isn’t Raspberry Pi’s first royal encounter. Back in 2014, Raspberry Pi was one of the UK tech startups invited to showcase our product at a reception at Buckingham Palace. At that stage, we had just celebrated the sale of our two millionth credit card–sized computer.
Fast forward to October 2016, when were celebrating the sale of our ten millionth Raspberry Pi computer with a reception at St James Palace and 150 members of our community. By this time, not only was our product flying off the shelves, but the Foundation had merged with Code Club, had expanded its teacher training programmes, and was working with thousands of volunteers to bring computing and digital making to tens of thousands of young people all over the world.
Both of our trips to the royal palaces were hosted by Prince Andrew, who has long been a passionate advocate for technology businesses and digital skills. On top of his incredible advocacy work, he’s also an entrepreneur and innovator in his own right, founding and funding initiatives such as iDEA and Pitch at the Palace, which make a huge impact on digital skills and technology startups.
We are really very fortunate to have him as our Patron.
Today’s visit was an opportunity to update Prince Andrew on the incredible progress we’ve made towards our mission since that first trip to Buckingham Palace.
We now have over 25 million Raspberry Pi computers in the wild, and people use them in education, in industry, and for their hobbies in an astonishing number of ways. Through our networks of Code Clubs and CoderDojos, we have supported more than a million young people to learn how to create with technology while also developing essential life skills such as teamwork, resilience, and creativity. You can read more about what we’ve achieved in our latest Annual Review.
We talked with Prince Andrew about our work to support computing in the classroom, including the National Centre for Computing Education in England, and our free online teacher training that is being used by tens of thousands of educators all over the world to develop their skills and confidence.
Prince Andrew shares our determination to encourage more girls to learn about computing and digital making, and we discussed our #realrolemodels campaign to get even more girls involved in Code Clubs and CoderDojos, as well as the groundbreaking gender research project that we’ve launched with support from the UK government.
One of our rituals at the Raspberry Pi Foundation is the monthly all-staff meetup. On the third Wednesday of every month, colleagues from all over the world congregate in Cambridge to share news and updates, learn from each other, and plan together (and yes, we have a bit of fun too).
My favourite part of Prince Andrew’s visit is that he organised it to coincide with the all-staff meetup. He spent most of his time speaking to team members and hearing about the work they do every day to bring our mission to life through creating educational resources, supporting our massive community of volunteers, training teachers, building partnerships, and much more.
In his address to the team, he said:
Raspberry Pi is one of those organisations that I have been absolutely enthralled by because of what you have enabled. The fact that there is this piece of hardware that started this, and that has led to educational work that reaches young people everywhere, is just wonderful.
In the 21st century, every single person in the workplace is going to have to use and interact with some form of digital technology. The fact that you are giving the next generation the opportunity to get hands-on is fantastic.
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