Tiny $25 computer is designed to teach programming to kids
Education
Raspberry Pi is an ultra low-cost computer designed for teaching computer programming to children.
It’s become fairly common to see phones and computer devices designed to completely hide their inner workings from their users. What’s far less common is to see a device developed specifically to enable users to see more of its technology. That, however, is precisely the premise behind Raspberry Pi, an ultra low-cost computer designed for teaching computer programming to children.
Roughly the size of a credit card, Raspberry Pi is designed to plug into a TV or to link with a touch screen to create a low-cost tablet. The device features a 700MHz ARM11 processor along with 128MB or 256MB of SDRAM and open software including Fedora Linux, Iceweasel, KOffice and Python. Also included are composite and HDMI video output, a SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot, an optional integrated 2-port USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller, and USB 2.0. Perhaps best of all, however, is that it’s expected to be priced at USD 35 for a system with wifi, or USD 25 for one without. “It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video,” the UK-based project explains. “We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.”
Once the Raspberry Pi goes into production — currently slated for January — its developers expect it to make an impact in both the developed and developing worlds. Education and tech-minded entrepreneurs: one to get involved in?
Spotted by: Marko Balabanovic
16th December 2011
Email: info@raspberrypi.org
Website: www.raspberrypi.org