Our next community story comes from a highly regarded community member who has been connecting young people with opportunities to learn and create with technology throughout her career. A US-based educator with over twenty years of experience, Yolanda Payne shares our mission to put computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

“The biggest reason I’m so invested in technology is because people invested in me.”

Yolanda Payne

Meet Yolanda

Yolanda Payne is an educator you might recognise from our online courses. Based in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, she’s passionate about making technology accessible to all and helping young people become technology creators.

Yolanda says, “The biggest reason I’m so invested in technology is because people invested in me. They saw something that I was good at, showed me opportunities, and so in turn, that was my philosophy in teaching.” 

Yolanda got her first computer at a young age and was hooked instantly: it opened up many new opportunities and led her to choosing a career in education. She says, “The computer gives me the tools to be an artist, it gives me the tools to create things, and if it does that for me, then just imagine what it will do for kids!”

“If you give a teacher a Raspberry Pi and show them these resources, they’re going to be hooked.”

Yolanda Payne

Yolanda has spent her entire professional life dedicated to education. She gained a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Mississippi University for Women; a master’s degree in Instructional Technology from Mississippi State University; and Educational Specialist degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Georgia in Curriculum and Instruction, and in Language and Literacy.

Throughout her twenty-one years as a classroom teacher and her time running Code Clubs, Yolanda found joy in supporting students who have multiple challenges or complex needs, and in seeing them thrive in the subject of computer science. Yolanda points out, “I worked with both students that were considered to be in special education and students that were gifted. And one of the biggest things that I saw that I don’t think people realise, especially about students in special education: they are used to solving problems. […] You’d be very surprised at how real-life problem-solving skills flow very easily into computer science.”

Yolanda now works as a Research Associate at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We are tremendously thankful for her contributions as an educator and an advocate for technology and young people. 

Please join us in celebrating her story by sharing it on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook! 

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Picademy 2019 dates

We’re thrilled to kick off our 2019 season, partnering with three new venues: we’ll be at Computer History Museum in the Bay Area the first week in June, at the University of California, Irvine in July, and at the Toronto Public Library in the second week in August. A big thank you to these venues for hosting us and supporting local educators to attend our free professional development program!

Picademy 2018 highlights

Last year, we partnered with four awesome venues to host eight Picademy events in the United States. Across the country at each Picademy, we met incredibly talented educators who are passionate about bringing digital making to their learners. Whether at the Liberty Science Center makerspace, on Georgia Tech University’s campus, or within the archives of the Living Computer Museum, we were truly inspired by all of our Picademy attendees, and thrilled to welcome them to the Raspberry Pi Certified Educator community.

The 2018 Picademy cohorts were diverse and experienced in their field: more than 300 educators from 48 different U.S. states and 9 countries participated — a mix of high school, middle, and elementary classroom teachers, librarians, museum staff, university lecturers, and teacher trainers. We loved having the chance to welcome educators from such different backgrounds and help them learn, connect, collaborate, and create awesome projects together.

Picademy has a big impact on educators: last year, 78% of our graduates said they felt confident using Raspberry Pi after attending, and 70% said they were very likely to share their experience with their students and colleagues. And the majority of our Picademy attendees also developed an interest in starting a Code Club or a CoderDojo in their community!

Ready to join us for Picademy 2019? Learn more and apply now.

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This is the only GIF. Honest.

Meet the RCEs

Out of the dozens of RCEs who attended, here are three awesome members of our community and their ISTE 2017 stories:

Nicholas Provenzano, Makerspace Director at University Liggett School and the original nerdy teacher, shared his ideas for designing innovative STEAM and maker projects. He also knocked our socks off by building his own digital badge using a Raspberry Pi Zero to stream tweets from the conference.

What's up w/ @Raspberry_Pi & digital making? Serious knowledge dropping at #ISTE17 #picademy pic.twitter.com/6yKIaRRWi4

— Drew (@ascollins) June 28, 2017

Amanda Haughs, TOSA Digital Innovation Coach in Campbell Union School District and digital learning champion, shared her ideas for engaging elementary school learners in technology and digital making. She also went next level with her ISTE swag, creating a wearable Raspberry Pi tote bag combining sewing and circuitry.

New post: "Pi Tote– a sewing and circuitry project w/the @Raspberry_Pi Zero W"https://t.co/Fb1IFZMH1n#picademy #Maker #ISTE17 #PiZeroW pic.twitter.com/SqYe1s3a0x

— Amanda Haughs (@MsHaughs) July 8, 2017

Rafranz Davis, Executive Director of Professional and Digital Learning for Lufkin ISD and edtech leader extraordinaire, shared her vision for making innovation and digital learning more equitable and accessible for all. She also received the ISTE 2017 Award for Outstanding Leadership in recognition of her innovative work in education and in advancing student-driven learning as well as her efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion across learning environments.

At #iste17, @rafranzdavis speaks about the privilege of access. How do we make innovation less privileged? #edtechc… https://t.co/6foMzgfE6f

— EdSurge (@EdSurge) June 26, 2017

Rafranz, Nicholas, and Amanda are all members of our original Picademy cohorts in the United States. Since summer 2016, more than 300 educators have attended US Picademy events and joined the RCE community. Be on the lookout later this year for our 2018 season events and sign up here for updates.

The Foundation at ISTE 2017

Oh, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation team was also at ISTE 2017 and we’re not too shabby either : ). We held a Raspberry Jam, which saw some fantastic projects from Raspberry Pi Certified Educators — the Raspberry Pi Preserve Jar from Heidi Baynes, Scratch student projects from Bradley Quentin and Kimberly Boyce, and Sense HAT activities with Efren Rodriguez.

But that’s not all we got up to! You can learn more about our team’s presentations — including on how to send a Raspberry Pi to near space — on our ISTE conference page here.

Our #ISTE17 crew had a PACKED day in San Antonio. If you didn't catch them today, see where they'll be: https://t.co/Rt0ec7PF7S pic.twitter.com/LBAeuqVUVj

— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) June 27, 2017

Join the fold

Inspired by all this education goodness? You can become a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator as well! All you need to do is attend one of our free two-day Picademy courses held across the US and UK. Join this amazing community of more than 1,000 teachers, librarians, and volunteers, and help more people learn about digital making.

If you’re interested in what our RCEs do at Picademy, check out our free online courses. These are available to anyone, and you can use them to learn about teaching coding and physical computing from the comfort of your home.

The post Raspberry Pi Certified Educators shine at ISTE 2017 appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Exhibiting at the Bett Show 2016 with the special Educator’s Edition of The MagPi

This year, we’ve been working hard to improve the support we provide to our Raspberry Pi Certified Educators when they take their first steps post-Picademy, and begin to share their new skills with their students or faculty on their own. In the past, we’ve provided printable versions of our resources or handed out copies of The MagPi. Instead of providing these separately, we thought it would be fun to bundle them together for all to access.

Educators getting hands-on with their builds at Picademy

Thanks to the support of our colleagues in the MagPi team, we’ve been able to bring you a new and improved special edition of The MagPi: it’s aimed at educators and is packed full of new content, including tutorials and guides, for use in schools and clubs. You can download a free PDF of the second issue of the special Educator’s Edition right now. If you want a printed copy, then you’ll need to seek us out at events or attend a Picademy in the UK and US whilst we have them in stock!

Warning: contains inspiration!

Contents include:

• The digital making revolution in education: how the maker movement has been taking the classroom by storm!
• A case study: creative computing at Eastwood Academy
• How to start a Code Club in your school
• Physical computing tutorials with Python and Scratch
• Teaching computing with Minecraft
• Blinky lights, cameras, micro:bits, and motor tutorials
• Sonic Pi live coding
• What’s next for Astro Pi?
• News about Raspberry Pi in education

The MagPi Educator’s Edition is freely licensed under Creative Commons (BY-SA-NC 3.0).

The post Inspiring educators with a special MagPi! appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Our aim was to give teachers the skills and knowledge they need to get creative with computing, no matter what their level of experience.

Educators teach, learn, and make with us at Picademy

Two years on, there are now over 700 Raspberry Pi Certified Educators around the world, working with tens of thousands of young people. We know that many of our Certified Educators have gone on to become leaders in the field, helping to train other educators and build a movement around computing and digital making in the classroom.

Based on the huge volume of questions and enquiries we get from people who want to get involved in Picademy, we think we’re onto something, and we’re developing some exciting plans for the future. For now, I wanted to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Picademy.

What is Picademy?

Picademy is a two-day course that allows educators to experience what can be achieved with a little help and lots of imagination. Through a series of workshops, we introduce a range of engaging ways to deliver computing in classrooms all over the world. Highlights include using physical computing to control electronic components like LEDs and buttons; coding music with Sonic Pi; and terraforming the world of Minecraft. On day two, attendees have the opportunity to apply their learning by developing their own project ideas, learning from each other and our experts.

Each cohort that attends contains a mix of primary, secondary, and post-16 educators, representing many different subject areas. One of our aims is to create leaders in education who are equipped with skills to train others in their community. Attending our training is the first step in that journey.

When are you bringing Picademy to [insert name of place here]?

This is by far the most common question. There’s clearly a huge demand for the kind of professional development that Picademy offers.

So far, we’ve been mainly focused on the UK. The first wave of events were held at Pi Towers in Cambridge. Over the past year, thanks to the generous support of our friends at Google, we have been able to bring Picademy to cities across the UK, with events in Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester. In the next few months, we’ll be running events in Newcastle, Liverpool, and London. The venues are part of the Google Digital Garage initiative, and we’ll be running Picademy sessions with them until at least April 2017, so we hope to pop up in a city near you soon!

This year, we launched a pilot programme in the USA, with our first ever Picademy training events outside the UK taking place in California in February and April, before heading to Baltimore in August.

We don’t currently have plans to launch Picademy in other parts of the world. We’d love to, but we just don’t have the capacity. We’re brainstorming ideas for how the Foundation can better support educators globally and as those ideas develop, we’ll be looking for your input to help shape them.

We often get asked whether we will partner with organisations in other parts of the world who want to run Picademy on our behalf. We aren’t currently considering those kind of partnerships, but it’s one of the options that we will be looking at in the long term.

I’m not a teacher, but I want to learn about Raspberry Pi. Can I attend?

Picademy is designed for teachers. The aim is to equip them with the best possible pedagogy, strategies, tools, and ideas to bring digital making into the classroom. It’s also about building a community of educators who can support each other and grow the movement.

It’s not a “How to use Raspberry Pi” course. There are lots of websites and video channels that are already doing a fantastic job in that space (see our Community page for a small selection of these).

We know that there are lots of people who aren’t formal teachers who help young people learn about computing and digital making, and we’re working hard to support them. For example, we have a huge programme of training for Code Club volunteers.

For Picademy, our priority is to support the people at the chalkface, where access to professional development is problematic and where up-skilling in digital making is needed most.

The first Picademy USA Cohort – our largest ever, totalling 40! © Douglas Fairbairn Photography / Courtesy of the Computer History Museum

We have accepted applications from people in other roles, like teaching assistants and librarians, who work with children every day in schools or other community settings, but the vast majority of participants have been qualified, serving teachers.

If you want to learn about Raspberry Pi, one of the best places to start is a Raspberry Jam. There are now hundreds of Jams happening regularly around the world. These are community events, run by brilliantly talented volunteers, that bring together people of all ages to learn about digital making.

Can I have access to the course materials?

All our Picademy sessions are based on resources that are available for free on our website. Some of the most common sessions are based on:

• Getting started with Physical Computing in both Scratch and Python
• Sonic Pi lessons
• Getting started with Minecraft Pi
• Getting started with the Raspberry Pi camera
• Spinning flower wheel
• Sense HAT pixel pet

Our focus is on collaboration, making, project-based learning, and computing – similar to most Raspberry Jams, in fact. If you are super-interested in STEAM, project-based learning, and digital making (the pillars of Picademy), then I’d recommend the following reading as a starting point:

• Young Digital Makers Report by Oliver Quinlan
• Mindstorms by Seymour Papert
• Invent to Learn by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager

The materials and reading are part of the recipe of a successful Picademy. What’s harder to share is the energy and atmosphere that’s created.

Using code we have created a funfair! All components triggered by #Python codes we have written ourselves #picademy pic.twitter.com/J5spWvoQom

— Miss Grady (@Miss_G_Y6) March 2, 2016

Our trainers all have experience of teaching in formal contexts, have good subject knowledge, and have a super-supportive manner. They share their expertise and passion with others, which is inspiring and infectious. The educators that attend are open-minded, imaginative, and curious. Together, we have a lot of fun.

Who can I speak to about Picademy?

The teacher training team at the Foundation consists of three full-time people: Picademy Manager James Robinson, Code Club Teacher Training Manager Lauren Hyams, and Education Team Co-ordinator Dan Fisher. Do reach out to us via the forum or social media.

We’re supported across the Foundation and our wider community by an awesome team that helps us design and deliver the events.

Without the support of all these people, we would not be able to run the volume of events that we do – I’d like to give a huge thank you with bells on to all our helpers!

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