RPi use cases explained

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

If you were to introduce computing/programming to 10-13yr olds, what would you teach?

Difficult question, but I think John's answer of "Logic" is a good place to start.

You have to be careful about getting into a lot of hardware details at that age, it's likely to have changed several times by the time they get to university.

It becomes a bit easier once they're old enough to pick their own subjects, but before that you need to keep it general enough to be interesting and not send 85% of the class to sleep.

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that

lol.. I had to go look it up too. we seem to be spread fairly well around the world so it's sometimes hard to know what's different and what's the same.

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

funnily enough, although I'm in the UK, here in Scotland we don't have GCSE either.   I did find it rather interesting to have a quick look at how much has changed since I was that age though

selsinork wrote:

 

Difficult question, but I think John's answer of "Logic" is a good place to start.

 

I just had an idea (don't know how feasible with kids) - what if each student had to be one of the robots, so no one person knew what the end program did, until they saw the result.

Or, taking the idea of logic, each student becoming a particular logic gate, and when they are handed (say) two colored balls (or something else to represent 1's and 0's), then they pass the resultant colored ball to the next logic gate.

Maybe that's too dumbed-down and tedious after a few minutes of it though..

The falstad simulator is incredibly flexible, here is an example. It can be totally modified by dragging wires, or right-clicking to add gates.

It covers other topics too, such as this example (might want to turn the volume down a bit first).

I just noticed this PDF from the University of Auckland is using that simulator for some coursework.

I wonder if anyone has written exercises for younger students based on this simulator - it is quite nice since no special software is needed.

shabaz wrote:

 

Or, taking the idea of logic, each student becoming a particular logic gate,

I'm not 100% sure what John had in mind, but I wasn't meaning logic quite so literally.

The falstad simulator is incredibly flexible, here is an example. It can be totally modified by dragging wires, or right-clicking to add gates.

I suspect that's a bit too far for 10-13 year olds, but I could be wrong.

Teach the principles of logic or at best simple single and/or/not operations, leave the descent into boolean algebra for later.

Sorry you're right.. I still had GCSE's in my head.

John Beetem wrote:

 

selsinork wrote:

 

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.

When I was about 12 my mother got me a game called WFF'N PROOF: The Game of Modern Logic, described on their web site as "the granddaddy of educational games".  I'm sure it was recommended from some seller of "educational games".  As a game it was a washout, because there wasn't anybody to play it with, but I devoured the instruction manual and learned propositional calculus from it.  Later on I discovered Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic (also available from gutenberg.org), which is a delightful introduction to predicate calculus and easily understood by an intelligent 12-14 year old.  I never had much interest in Lewis Carroll's Game of Logic that's included with the Dover edition.  I guess it's the "great-great-grandaddy of educational games".

Logic is something everybody needs to know to avoid being bamboozled.  Quoting from Lewis Carroll:

Once master the machinery of Symbolic Logic, and you have a mental occupation always at hand, of absorbing interest, and one that will be of real use to you in any subject you may take up. It will give you clearness of thought——the ability to see your way through a puzzle——the habit of arranging your ideas in an orderly and get-at-able form——and, more valuable than all, the power to detect fallacies, and to tear to pieces the flimsy illogical arguments, which you will so continually encounter in books, in newspapers, in speeches, [on web sites ], and even in sermons, and which so easily delude those who have never taken the trouble to master this fascinating Art.

This answers the Professor's question.  As long as people who benefit from bamboozling decide what's taught in school, Logic won't be part of it.

Eben Upton explains the current RPF organizational structure in an interview at:

http://issuu.com/eeweb/docs/volume_106_-_eben_upton/5?e=7607911/3960319

There is a charitable side of the organization and a trading side.  The interview talks

a lot about "industrial applications". 

The lead paragraph says:

... This computer's simplicity allows it to be a great teaching tool for children and hobbyists alike and is powerful enough to be featured in industrial applications and personal projects.  ...

Under the heading "What is the Raspberry Pi Foundation?"

... We are kind of an unusual charity in that we don't really accept donations. ... By and large, we trade. ... The foundation has a bit that makes the money and a bit that spends the money, which is the educational side of it. ... It actually feels very much like a commercial company, but all of the returns are put back into this charity.

Under the heading "Could you talk about some of the operating systems that are supported?"

We've gotten a lot of questions like, "To what extent does a Pi make a good industrial computer?"  It'll be interesting to see.  We have seen people putting them into industrial applications, but I think the industrial applications have to come first, and then the RTOS support will follow, rather than expecting the RTOS vendors to put a lot of investment into this relatively unproven platform.

Under the heading "Do you see a lot of people using the Pi in commercial applications?"

We see a number of people using them basically as industrial computers. ...

Under the heading "How many people work at the Foundation?"

... On the Foundation side, we have a couple of people at the moment, but we are looking to staff that up.  On the business side we have four or five people.  On both sides there are a lot of contractors. ...

The Eben interview in the previous post says sales are 1.3 Million over 15 months.

On May 30, Liz had said 1 m as of January, 2013 and "more like 1.5 m now".

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4103

To be honest asking RPF about volumes is probably not the best. Wouldn't be better to total up the sales of Farnell and RS then job done

Sorry when you said standard lenses I was expecting C mount lenses like those on a propper security camera.

It would be interesting to see how the Pi Cam operates in low light !?!?!

selsinork wrote:

 

John Alexander wrote:

 

Selsinork, how are they dealing with the fact that the sensor is so much smaller than that for secuity cameras.

do you just need to put up with the  fact your sensor covers only a fraction of the expected area?

Two thoughts, the camera will stream 1920x1080, so the horizontal field of view is quite good, or you just add a fisheye style lens intended for a mobile phone to widen the angle.

 

The simple fact that it's around 50 quid for something that can do 5M pixel stills (or low fps mjpeg) or ~2Mp 30fps streaming compared to probably 200-300 for a 1.3Mp is going to make it worthwhile exploring. Example http://www.camsecure.co.uk/HDWebcam720P.html  of one that has a similarly capable camera, so with that sort of price difference you can be sure it's going to be done...

There are several recipies for getting it working with motion or zoneminder on the RPF forum.

I expect security cameras weren't something that was ever thought about, but there's a community out here who will think up all manner of uses