Paul Hallett

For the past few weeks I’ve been taking classes of 15-17 year old students and teaching them a variety of programming concepts and practical knowledge in Python.

Yesterday, I ran an extended workshop on the Raspberry Pi, followed by some Python programming basics with a class of 25.

Until recently I had never taught anyone anything about these things, so the experience has been entirely new to me and I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Some are surprising to me, but might not be to you:

Python

• All the students I’ve taught have been naturally curious and malleable enough for them to grasp any concept I’ve thrown at them. They pick things up extremely quickly.
• They’ve already covered simple algebraic logic in mathematics, so with that in mind, I was able to introduce nearly all the programming concepts to them from a logical manner.
• Whilst teaching Python you’ll find yourself quoting almost the exact code needed to solve the problem. This might be because Python has a really nice readable syntax. It certainly helps teaching it.
• After covering Python basics (variables, lists, functions and if statements) I could set simple tasks and the students could come up with solutions in less than 30 minutes.

• All the students I’ve taught have loved the Raspberry Pi. Most have been completely astounded at a computer they can fit in their hand.
• Half of the students I’ve introduced to the Raspberry Pi have asked me how to get hold of one.
• At a school that I regularly run a programming club in, students have started bringing in their Raspberry Pi they’ve purchased to learn how to program more.
• I’ve seen student’s attitude and opinion towards computers completely change over a few weeks after giving them a Raspberry Pi to play with.

All of this has taught me one thing:

The Raspberry Pi really has helped me to start a decent education or interest in computer science with a lot of students.

I’d say in the past few months, I’ve taught around 80 students already. From the feedback I’ve gotten from teachers - about a third of them have pursued things further afterwards without any help from myself.

What is the next step?

WIth Djangopi and Plymouth University, I’ll be visiting 10 schools and running small workshops similarly to what I’ve done already.

After that, who knows? More schools, bigger classes, world domination? 

A better educated country?

One thing is for sure - I believe educators and Raspberry Pi need to work together to help organise a lesson structure or guide on what can be covered with the Raspberry Pi.

I also thoroughly believe teachers need their own refresh or introduction course to cover these things. I’ve held a teacher training day with 10 teachers in October and they, like the students, absolutely loved this new style of hands on teaching.