RPi use cases explained

If the main aim were charitable support of education, the price of Pi would have dropped by now anyway.

I think the answer to that is pretty clear.  They like the price point and want to use Moore's law to increase

the capabilities rather than further lower the price.

Pete Lomas is quoted as saying recently in a 14 May 2013 interview:

Maintaining Pi's progress is important. "What we don't want is for Pi to be a one trick pony," Lomas said. "The educational goal is too important. So our focus continues to be on the Pi's educational value. How can we improve that? Would the addition of more computing power increase the educational value? Would the introduction of more accessories make a difference?"

...

Nevertheless, Lomas admitted the Foundation is thinking about Pi2 – what it might be and how it might fit with Pi1. "Moore's Law says there will be a better processor and there will be more memory and that will allow us to maintain the price."

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-technology/raspberry-pi-foundation-looks-to-the-future/50316/

I thought that

"The chip has a powerful gpu and we want that to be used for educational purposes – there's no point in having a gpu if you can't use it."

Lomas' view is that vision will be a key learning experience. "People need to learn how facial recognition works, for example," he said. "The module will bring a new level of opportunity."

was an interesting comment..

The Arm just isn't powerful enough to make a lot of this practical and squeezing the raw images through the gpu->arm interface seems to be a bottleneck as people trying to side-step the GPU's image processing are finding out.

The GPU not being open enough means you only get to use what the firmware provides. I'm not sure of the educational value in simply being able to tell the GPU to do the dirty work for you if you can't get inside that process and play with how it works yourself.

Pete Lomas is quoted as saying recently in a 14 May 2013 interview:

 

"The educational goal is too important. So our focus continues to be on the Pi's educational value.

A line seems to have got lost:

"So we will continue to focus on everything except the educational release."

Would the addition of more computing power increase the educational value?  -- Lomas

Lomas' view is that vision will be a key learning experience. "People need to learn how facial recognition works, for example," he said.

I think Pete Lomas would make a great salesperson for BBB, with its increased

computing power and support for machine vision.  Until Pi2 (Raspberry Tau?)

comes out, there seems to be no good reason to push RPi for education.

"So we will continue to focus on everything except the educational release."

That's consistent with the question yesterday:

I am seeking input about enterprises that are using Raspberry Pi for internal applications to meet internal needs.

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/25484

There is a linked-in page for someone with the same name which says:

I write invaluable case studies and white papers that accomplish technology companies’ marketing and messaging goals.

It's complete sleight of hand, for the reasons I enumerated in my long multi-point post, #3.  There are many stakeholders and education is just one, raised when convenient and ignored when not.

Education provides great PR because it's "motherhood and apple pie", but after a year and a half there is still nothing to show for it, so at most it expresses good intentions, not investment of time and money.  Education also provides a great cover while doing something entirely different, which is to focus on selling boards and modules, promote Broadcom's ability to design effective media SoCs, and create a community frenzy based on hype, as Pete so clearly underlined.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.  As I've mentioned elsewhere several times, I think RPF did their good deed for the decade (their one and only one) when they launched a dirt-cheap ARM board and so forced this price band on every other ARM licensee in the prototyping boards sector.  That's been awesome, as people who want better boards and full documentation can now go to other suppliers.  The Pi's less than awesome design and Broadcom's disinterest in openness don't matter anymore because Pi's pricing has opened up the market.

It's complete sleight of hand,

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Education provides great PR because it's "motherhood and apple pie"

I don't know how many times I've seen an RPi complaint deflected with something like:

"How can you possibly criticize an educational charity.  We've mortgaged our houses

for that noble purpose, you know."

but after a year and a half there is still nothing to show for it,

Have you seen the first 6 videos at

  http://www.cambridgegcsecomputing.org/courses

Eric says:

This is a wonderful start. It is good to see such professionalism and money devoted to making educational videos. ...

 

The blender lecture hides the fact that a computer program is the most interesting type of data and misses the obvious analogy between a computer program and a recipe used while cooking. An introductory cooking class will focus on reading and following a recipe. Many 14-to-16-year-old children already help in the kitchen and understand the importance of a recipe. A lecture should be both entertaining and interesting, but there are better ways to entertain than by stupidly making a smoothy using random ingredients and drinking it. Computer science does not become more interesting if it is simplified so much it is no longer useful.

 

...

Liz reponds:

I have my own experiment to make:

*Points at Clive* STUPID. STUPID STUPID STUPID.

Nope. It’s not making me feel bigger or cleverer, and I don’t think it’s enhancing any point I’m trying to make. Ho hum. Back to the drawing board.

James Clough says:

Having followed your blogs from inception and aware of the great things being done I have some concerns on the approach to the education piece.

(1) If the aim is to inspire young people to enjoy programming and being creative, why define it around the achievement of a GCSE. When I mentioned this to my son, who is 13, he couldn’t be less interested.

...

Liz reponds:

It’s hard for me not to respond to that with heavy sarcasm, given how many people have been working themselves to death on our educational offering. I am trying my best.

 

...

It looks like they're off to an interesting start.

selsinork wrote:

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

As I noted above from personal experience, the shortfall in STEM skills was very pronounced when trying to recruit undergrads,

I keep wondering if that simply means we're teaching the kids the wrong things.

"Logic!  Why don't they teach Logic in these schools?" asks the Old Professor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

In the USA, there's a lot of lip service given to the importance of STEM, but the reality is that schools steer clear of any topics that might result in (gasp) Independent Thinking.  But then the USA has traditionally held teaching beneath contempt with slogans like "If you so smart why ain't you rich?" and "Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach."  OTOH, yesterday I saw a T-shirt that says "Those who can, TEACH.  Those who can't, pass laws about teaching."

coder27 wrote:

 

I find it interesting that the rules for Rob Bishop's US marketing tour this summer explicitly say

"Rob will not be able to visit grade schools, but he may decide to fit in some university visits."

It would seem that even a token grade school visit would go a long way to showing an interest

in grade school education.

RasPi has posted items on their front page about Eben visiting various schools, mostly in the UK, so it's beyond token.  I attended one of Rob's visits last year in San Francisco, which was informative and fun.  I got to show off my Atrix Lapdock, which I had just got working the week before.  What Rob said about the educational side is that RasPi is counting on the "community" to come up with educational applications.  I suspect he'll say the same thing this year.  The reality is IMO that to develop good eductional software requires teachers who have (1) the knowledge to do it, (2) the desire to do it, and (3) the time to do it, which is a difficult combination.  Teachers in the USA are generally swamped -- I don't know how much slack they have elsewhere on the planet.

Another problem is that while RasPi is fun and easy to use and set up most of the time, when it doesn't work figuring out why is just as nasty as any other modern computer.  I know a lot about computers, but I'm not an OS hacker and I hate being a system admin.  Having a PC means being your own system admin unless you work for an organization that has professionals to do this for you.  Running a classroom full of RasPis means you get to be system admin for a whole classroom full of computers.