With the rapid advances being made in AI systems and chatbots built on large language models, such as ChatGPT, it’s more important than ever that all young people understand the fundamentals of computer science. 

Our aim is to enable young people all over the world to learn about computer science through providing access to free, high-quality and engaging resources that can be used by both students and teachers.

A partnership between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the University of Cambridge, Ada Computer Science offers comprehensive resources covering everything from algorithms and data structures to computational thinking and cybersecurity. It also has nearly 1000 rigorously researched and automatically marked interactive questions to test your understanding. Ada Computer Science is improving all the time, with new content developed in response to user feedback and the latest research. Whatever your interest in computer science, Ada is the place for you.

If you’re teaching or studying a computer science qualification at school, you can use Ada Computer Science for classwork, homework, and revision. Computer science teachers can select questions to set as assignments for their students and have the assignments marked directly. The assignment results help you and your students understand how well they have grasped the key concepts and identify areas where they would benefit from further tuition. Students can learn with the help of written materials, concept illustrations, and videos, and they can test their knowledge and prepare for exams.

A comprehensive resource for computing education

Ada Computer Science builds on work we’ve done to support the English school system as part of the National Centre for Computing Education, funded by the Department for Education.

The topics on the website map to exam board specifications for England’s Computer Science GCSE and A level, and will map to other curricula in the future.

In addition, we want to make it easy for educators and learners across the globe to use Ada Computer Science. That’s why each topic is aligned to our own comprehensive taxonomy of computing content for education, which is independent of the English curriculum, and organises the content into 11 strands, including programming, computing systems, data and information, artificial intelligence, creating media, and societal impacts of digital technology.

If you are interested in how we can specifically adapt Ada Computer Science for your region, exam specification, or specialist area, please contact us.

Why use Ada Computer Science at school?

Ada Computer Science enables teachers to:

• Plan lessons around high-quality content
• Set self-marking homework questions
• Pinpoint areas to work on with students
• Manage students’ progress in a personal markbook

Students get:

• Free computer science resources, written by specialist teachers
• A huge bank of interactive questions, designed to support learning
• A powerful revision tool for exams
• Access wherever and whenever you want

In addition:

• The topics include real code examples in Python, Java, VB, and C#
• The live code editor features interactive coding tasks in Python
• Quizzes make it quick and easy to set work

Get started with Ada Computer Science today by visiting adacomputerscience.org.

The post Launching Ada Computer Science, the new platform for learning about computer science appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The project is a collaboration between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the University of Cambridge, and is funded by the Department for Education’s National Centre for Computing Education programme.

Isaac Computer Science

Isaac Computer Science gives you access to a huge range of online learning materials for the classroom, homework, and revision — all for free.

The platform’s resources are mapped to the A level specifications in England (including the AQA and OCR exam boards). You’ll be able to set assignments for your students, have the platform mark it for you, and be confident that the content is relevant and high quality. We are confident that this will save you time in planning lessons and setting homework.

“Computer Science is a relatively small subject area and teachers across the country often work alone without the support of colleagues. Isaac Computer Science will build a teaching and learning community to support teachers at all levels and will offer invaluable support to A level students in their learning journey. As an experienced teacher, I am very excited to have the opportunity to work on this project.”
– Diane Dowling, Isaac Computer Science Learning Manager and former teacher

And that’s not all! To further support you, we are also running free student workshops and teacher CPD events at universities and schools around England. Tickets for the events are available to book through the Isaac Computer Science website.

“Isaac Computer Science helped equip me with the skills to teach A level, and ran a great workshop at one of their recent Discovery events using the micro:bit and the Kitronik :MOVE mini. This is a session that I’ll definitely be using again and again.”
 – James Spencer, Computer Science teacher at St Martin’s School

A teacher works with her students at our recent Discovery event in Cambridge.

Why sign up?

Isaac Computer Science provides:

• High-quality materials written by experienced teachers
• Resources mapped to the AQA and OCR specifications
• CPD events for teachers
• Workshops for students

Isaac Computer Science allows you to:

• Plan lessons around high-quality content pages, thus saving time
• Select and set self-marking homework questions
• Pinpoint areas to work on with your students
• Manage students’ progress in your personal markbook

Start using Isaac Computer Science today:

• Sign up at isaaccomputerscience.org
• Request a teacher account and register your students
• Start using the platform in your classroom!

The post Say hello to Isaac Computer Science appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Today, we’re announcing another Sense HAT emulator designed to run natively on your Raspberry Pi desktop, instead of inside a browser. Developed by Dave Jones, it’s intended for people who own a Raspberry Pi but not a Sense HAT. In the picture below, the sliders are used to change the values reported by the sensors while your code is running.

So, why do we need two versions?

• For offline use, possibly the most common way Raspberry Pis are used in the classroom.
• To accommodate the oldest 256 MB models of Raspberry Pi which cannot run the web version.
• To allow you to integrate your Sense HAT program with any available Python modules, or other Raspberry Pi features such as the Camera Module.

The emulator will come pre-installed in the next Raspbian release but, for now, you can just install it by typing the commands below into a terminal window:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-sense-emu python3-sense-emu python-sense-emu-doc sense-emu-tools -y

You can then access it from the Desktop menu, under Programming.

The emulator closely simulates the Sense HAT hardware being attached to your Pi. You can read from the sensors or write to the LED matrix using multiple Python processes, for example.

Write your code in IDLE as before; there are also a number of examples that can be opened from the emulator’s built-in menu. If you then want to port your code to a physical Sense HAT, you just need to change

sense_emu

to

sense_hat

at the top of your program. Reverse this if you’re porting a physical Sense HAT program to the emulator, perhaps from one of our educational resources; this step isn’t required in the web version of the emulator.

There are a number of preferences that you can adjust to change the behaviour of the emulator, most notably sensor simulation, otherwise known as jitter. This costs some CPU time, and is disabled by default on the low-end Raspberry Pis, but it provides a realistic experience of how the hardware sensors would behave. You’ll see that the values being returned in your code drift according to the known error tolerances of the physical sensors used on the Sense HAT.

This emulator will allow more Raspberry Pi users to participate in future Astro Pi competitions without having to buy a Sense HAT: ideal for the classroom where 15 Sense HATs may be beyond the budget.

So, where do you start? If you’re new to the Sense HAT, you can just copy and paste many of the code examples from our educational resources, like this one. You can also check out our e-book Sense HAT Essentials. For a complete list of all the functions you can use, have a look at the Sense HAT API reference here.

You can even install this emulator on other types of Linux desktop, such as Ubuntu! For more information on how to do this, please visit the emulator documentation pages here.

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Back in 2015 we ran a competition where students could design and program computer science experiments, to be run by Tim Peake on specially cased Raspberry Pis called Astro Pis. Here’s the original competition video, voiced by Tim himself:

The competition ran from January to July 2015 and produced seven winning experiments, which were launched into space a few days before Tim started his mission. Between February and April 2016, these experiments were run on board the ISS under Tim Peake’s supervision. They’re mostly based around the sensors found on the Sense HAT, but a few also employ the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. Head over to the Astro Pi website now to check out the results, released today!

You might also know that we ran an extension to this competition involving a couple of music-based challenges. These challenges have no scientific output to discuss, because they were part of a crew care package for Tim’s enjoyment, but you can get your hands on the winning code to turn the Astro Pis into MP3 players and Sonic Pi tunes.

One of the main things we’ve learnt from running Astro Pi is that the biggest motivational factor for young people is the very tangible goal of having their code run in space. This eclipses any physical prize we could offer. Many people see space as quite distant and abstract, but with Astro Pi you can actually get your hands on space-qualified hardware, create something that would work up in space, and become an active participant in the European space programme.

Many of the Astro Pi winners now express an interest in studying aerospace and computer science. They’ve gained exposure to the real-life process of scientific endeavour, and faced industrial software development challenges along the way. We hope that everyone who participated in Astro Pi has been positively influenced by the programme. The results also demonstrate that the payload works reliably in space. This has been noticed by ESA, who are now planning to use it during upcoming missions. It’s really important for us that the payload continues to be used to run your code in space, so we’re working hard with ESA to make sure that we can do Astro Pi all over again.

This project has been a huge collaborative effort from the start and the Raspberry Pi Foundation would like to thank everyone who has participated in the competitions, and the following companies who have contributed staff time, facilities, and funding to make it all happen: UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, BIOTESC, TLOGOS, Surrey Satellite Technology, Airbus Defence and Space, CGI Group, QinetiQ Space, UK Space Trade Association, ESERO UK, KTN Space, and Nesta. Of course, Tim Peake himself has been hugely supportive and enthusiastic about the project from the start.

British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake with the prototype Astro Pi. Image credit ESA.

We would also like to thank Libby Jackson, who is the Astronaut Flight Education Programme Manager at the UK Space Agency and a former flight director at ESA. She oversees all of the Principia educational activities, including Astro Pi.

Libby Jackson, UK Space Agency. Image credit German Zoeschinger.

During the interview for her job at the UK Space Agency a few years ago, she pitched an idea for running a project on the ISS involving Raspberry Pi computers. Instead of launching traditional physical equipment, the experiments would be in the form of computer software, meaning that many more experiments could be accommodated. That kernel of an idea is what eventually became Astro Pi.

Izzy deployed on the Nadir Hatch window of Node 2. Image credit ESA.

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York is using the Pi to help get the students started with computing (for those whose contact has been limited to tablets and desktops!) before they get to university: every year, they send a free Raspberry Pi to their new undergraduates who are about to start a Computer Science course, and support them to prepare for the Raspberry Pi Challenge. It also forms a great social event which gets the computer science students together (along with beery delights) to fight it out in the Pi Squared arena!

Last year they used a version of Battleships to compete, but this year they’ve changed to Squares. One of the great things about this game is that the simplest few lines of code can make a huge difference over the random player (simply iterating through all possible ‘walls’ and drawing one if it closes a box is a big improvement on drawing walls at random), but there is much more that can be done to improve and optimise the strategy (there is a time limit per move, so you are a little limited!).

If you’re interested in playing the game and writing an implementation yourself (or if you’re another university and you’d like to compete against York’s outstanding undergraduates), the code and documentation is all freely available on GitHub:

https://github.com/waps101/PiSquare

As an alternative challenge, there is also the chance to compete in Blue Pi Thinking, which is an opportunity for the students to create something ingenious using a Raspberry Pi. The results from this project have been quite amazing.

One student created a tabletop food ordering system using the Raspberry Pi touch display. The idea is that the screen is embedded into the table at a fast food restaurant, and you can order your food and pay for it using NFC without actually having to leave your table! I can’t wait to see the first fast food joint with fully integrated Raspberry Pi shopping!

Another student wanted to create a pill diary system for an elderly relative. Here the central idea was to create a simple schedule for the pills which would beep or flash when it was time to take a pill. It also would have the ability to take a photo or a time-lapse video, so a family member or carer could check they were being taken correctly.

The picture above is from one student who connected his camera to the Pi. His system would take a photo of a scene from four sides, and then recreate the object in Minecraft!

The project shown above was created to map the mood of the UK. It took Twitter feeds from around the country and used various recurring words and phrases to decide on the mood of people from different places, then displayed them on a map of the UK with different colours to indicate the mood.

Lastly, a project to demonstrate how a Raspberry Pi can be used to control a solar panel installation and track the sun!

Read more about the Raspberry Pi Challenge from York’s Department of Computer Science. They’re already thinking ahead to next year’s Challenge with a new group of first-year undergraduates – I can’t wait to see what the next lot get up to!

The post University of York: Raspberry Pi Challenge 2015 appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The Department for Education (DfE) has just announced that Computer Science is to be added to the new English Baccalaureate or EBacc. The EBacc is a series of new qualifications to replace the GCSEs that English kids take at 16, designed to be more rigorous than the existing standards.

This is an enormous curricular change for England, which has traditionally recognised only Physics, Biology and Chemistry as core science subjects. Computer Science is now on a level footing with those subjects, carrying the same weight and prestige, and having an equal impact on choices pupils can make later about A Levels and University courses. This is wonderful news.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said today:

It is great news that Google is helping the brilliant Raspberry Pi project. We are replacing the old-fashioned ICT curriculum with a Computer Science curriculum. This will combine with the Raspberry Pi project to spread teaching of computer coding which is so educationally and economically vital.

The new Computer Science curriculum replaces the old ICT curriculum, discontinued last year. The old ICT courses did not prepare students for studying Computer Science at university (or for much else); we’re delighted to see their replacement being treated as a proper, exacting academic subject. There’s a statement from the DfE that you can read in full over at their website; it’s worth a look.

What specifics would you like to see included in a new CompSci curriculum?

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