[LINK] School student computer program warnings come home to

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

On 3/02/2013 12:48 PM, BRD wrote:
> On 3/02/2013 12:18 PM, Kerry Webb wrote:
>> On 3/02/13 11:08 AM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>>> On 3/02/2013 10:06 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I imagine if I went back through the Link archives, each of these
>>>> results were predicted.
>>>
>>> Jan, you beat me to it, although I was going to post the SMH link.
>>> It's another good example of my mantra: Every solution creates new
>>> problems. And it's not as though these problems were hard to predict.
>>
>> and they were drawn to the attention of the Minister(s) before the
>> program was announced.
> 
> So, do we look forward to hearing about how they will solve these 
> consequential problems? The SMH report has this quote:
> 
> 'A spokeswoman for federal Education Minister Peter Garrett would not 
> make any commitment on future funding, but said the five-year program 
> was ''delivered on time and within budget", with 957,805 computers 
> bought nationally at a cost of $2.4 billion.'


Ok then .. perhaps we might have students brewing their own computers ..


"A Tiny Computer Attracts a Million Tinkerers"

By John Biggs, www.nytimes.com  Jan 30, 2013 


Raspberry Pi may sound like the name of a math-based dessert. But it is 
actually one of the hottest and cheapest little computers in the world 
right now. Almost one million of these $35 machines have shipped since 
last February, capturing the imaginations of educators, hobbyists and 
tinkerers around the world.

The story of the Raspberry Pi begins in 2006 when Eben Upton and other 
faculty members at the University of Cambridge in Britain found that 
their incoming computer science students were ill-prepared for a high-
tech education. While many students in the previous decade were 
experienced electronics hobbyists by the time they got to college, these 
freshmen were little more than skilled Web designers. 

Easy-to-use, modern PCs hide most of the nuts and bolts behind a pleasing 
interface. Mr. Upton posited that parents did not want their children to 
destroy their expensive computers by experimenting with their insides. 
But a cheaper machine would be fair game for messing around. 

The Raspberry Pi, about 3 inches by 2 inches and less than an inch high,
was intended to replace the expensive computers in school science labs. 

For less than the price of a new keyboard, a teacher could plug in the Pi 
and connect it to older peripherals that might be lying around. But 
because Pi initially ran only Linux, a free operating system popular with 
programmers and hobbyists, students would have a learning curve. 

The Raspberry Pi Foundation began selling the computers in February of 
last year. They soon could not keep them in stock. 

“We honestly were thinking of this as a 1,000-to-5,000 unit opportunity,” 
Mr. Upton said. “The thing we didn’t anticipate was this whole other 
market of technically competent adults who wanted to use it. We’re 
selling to hobbyists.” 

One Pi owner, Dave Akerman, of Brightwalton, England, even sent a 
Raspberry Pi to the upper atmosphere, floating it 40,000 meters up using 
a weather balloon. There he was able to take live video, photos and 
measurements. 

“Now every primary school in the world can take pictures from near 
space,” Mr. Upton said. 

“You give people access to this tool and they do great things.” 

Picking up a Raspberry Pi is not as easy as popping into a store. The Pi 
is so popular that many distributors are constantly out of stock. It is 
also difficult to find them online. 

“The old phrase ‘selling like hot cakes’ needs to be updated to ‘selling 
like Raspberry Pi’s,’ ” said Limor Fried, founder and engineer at 
Adafruit Industries, a distributor of the Pi. “We’ve sold tens of 
thousands in weeks.” Ms. Fried is actually using a few Raspberry Pis and 
custom software to streamline her receiving and shipping system. 

The Pi costs $35, or $25 for an older model, and comes as a bare circuit 
board. Leaving the defenseless little thing unclothed is tantamount to Pi 
abuse, so you should also pick up a plastic enclosure. Adafruit sells 
clear plastic enclosures for $15, and Polycase.com sells a solid, opaque 
plastic case for $17. 

The Raspberry Pi works best with an HDMI-compatible monitor and USB 
keyboard and mouse. It is powered via a standard USB cable — just like 
the one that charges your phone — and it includes an audio-out port for 
connecting a set of speakers, plus an RCA jack if you don’t have a 
digital TV or monitor available. 

There is no on-off switch. To turn it off, you simply pull out the power 
cable. 

The Raspberry Pi will not do much out of the box. Because it has no 
onboard storage or operating system, you will need to copy the necessary 
software to a high-capacity SD memory card. A four-gigabyte card usually 
works well, but you may want more if you plan on loading applications or 
games. 

There are a number of available operating systems for the Raspberry Pi. 

On the official Web site, www.raspberrypi.org, you’ll find something 
under downloads called Raspbian, a Raspberry-flavored version of the 
Debian operating system that includes tools for beginners. Raspbian uses 
an interface that will be familiar to users of Windows or Linux. 

Adafruit has its own version of the Pi operating system called the 
Raspberry Pi Education Linux Distro at www.learn.adafruit.com. It comes 
with a child-friendly browser. 

Also available are programs that you can use to add additional features 
to the Raspberry Pi, including Wi-Fi support (an add-on peripheral is 
required) and hardware controllers for connecting your Pi to sensors, 
motors and more. 

Truly adventurous Raspberry Pi fans can even turn the product into a 
small home media center. Because the Pi has a powerful graphics chip on 
board, users have been able to stream video and photos to their big-
screen TVs using little more than a Pi and a Linux program like RaspbMC 
at www.raspbmc.com. This fully-featured media center lets you stream 
video from a hard drive on the network and supports AirPlay, Apple’s 
proprietary video and audio streaming system. 

Mr. Upton said the plan was to develop the Pi’s software rather than the 
hardware. “If you improve the software, everyone can use it,” he 
said. “If you change the hardware, you leave a million buyers behind.” 

Mr. Upton said he was “blown away” by the reception the Pi had gotten 
online. 

“I’m not aware of a company that has gone from a standing start to a 
million in a year,” he said. “It’s quite a wild ride. I don’t get a lot 
of sleep at the moment.” 

When asked if he planned to give a Pi to his children, Mr. Upton said he 
and his wife, Liz, who works with him on the project, had not had time to 
start a family. 

“We’re busy, so we’re glad we haven’t had kids yet,” he said. “It’s Pi 
and then kids, not kids and then Pi.” 

--

Cheers,
Stephen