Raspberry Pi- Thanks, Britain!

Raspberry Pi Model B

Video of Sonic Pi, the Music Programming Program

One of the reasons I'm very excited for the 2014-2015 Ed Tech School Year or ETSY is that I get to be involved in tech clubs in the Elementary Schools in our District.  So, naturally I took home and ordered some toys and try them out so that I'd have some cool things to share with the kids when we get these clubs officially going early this school year.  I'm going to be doing more to keep up my blog this year and with the Tech Clubs starting up, I've got so much to talk about!  

I received at about 10:30 am a package from Amazon that contained a Raspberry Pi Starter kit.  I spent a majority of the afternoon (well, an entire afternoon) playing with it and getting used to the more command-based interface.  At about 2 o'clock I hit a wall and wondered why this complicated tool would be valuable, but after a few exercises found on the Raspberry Pi website I had a breakthrough.  The point of this terrific little tool is to teach us how to use line commands to get the computer to do specific things.  The more I tried to learn the game, the easier it became.  I'm not yet qualified to work for NASA but I'm closer than I was this morning!  

So, just an overview of the Raspberry Pi- it's a small computer that is an open circuit board.  It costs about $37 and runs the Linux OS.  It comes to us from our friends Across the Pond who formed an organization to teach students in the UK to program and understand how computers work.  The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a very helpful website that really helped to break the ice for me today.  

One of my favorite activities was to program the tune, Frere Jaques in the Sonic Pi application that comes free with the device itself.  Instead of typing the notes (CDEC, etc...) I had to program "Play 60, Sleep 0.5, Play 64".  It was very fun.  I figured out how to program chords.  I am looking forward to learning more about this little gadget and getting my students to see what they can control.

If you haven't tried to use this device and would like to, I'd like to share some support helps that were most helpful today:

• When I first turned the RP on, it asked which operating system to install.  I didn't know there were options, so I chose one that was for much more advanced users- Make sure and install the first one on the list (Choose Raspian).  I had to reformat the preloaded SD card and download the whole package from here.  It wasn't a big deal, but I was worried that it would be when I wasn't sure how to fix it.  This video helped tremendously.
• When the tutorials said to type the command "1s" to look in a directory it didn't work for me.  I figured out that I was successful when I typed "dir" instead.  
• I can only get it to completely shut down when I type "sudo halt" in the command line after I've logged out of the main screen.  To turn it back on I have to unplug it and plug it back in.
• I didn't really start to enjoy the device until I tried out some of the demonstration exercises found here (keep in mind the "1s" tip shown above).
• My favorite one to try with students will probably be the Sonic Pi Activity.  It was a very simple interface that does a very simple function.  It's easy to use and quite engaging.  They give you enough instruction to get started and then become dangerous.  The activity can be found here.

This is a very cool tool that I'd love to collaborate with other educators and interested folks to find out how this is being used in classrooms.  There is a community of Pi People that have provided their supports and resources that I will be frequenting here.   I cannot wait to learn more!  Please Tweet Me your ideas!