11/11/15 20:26 Outreach work with the Raspberry Pi
Over the last two years I have developed a number of workshops which I have either delivered at Raspberry Jam events or at my school. This year I am very fortunate to have three hours on my timetable once a fortnight for outreach work. Up to now I have been running sessions at my school but I am now starting to take all my gear to other schools.
Having a big boot is a real bonus, I can easily fit 15 monitors in my boot along with all the gear to set up a classroom.
15 Raspberry Pi workstations setup in a classroom ready for the first workshop
What I have learnt?
Before the workshop
- Visit the school to discuss aims and objectives of the workshop.
- Visit the classroom, particularly note how many sockets are available.
- Check that all your equipment is working
- Have at least one spare Raspberry Pi and three or four SD cards
- Identify any students who will need additional support with the class teacher
A possible model for a Minecraft Pi workshop (90 minutes)
- Introduce yourself and the Raspberry Pi
- Quick build challenge (10 minutes) to build a hospital – explain controls for students who haven’t used PC / Pi edition before
- Show students how you can build a hospital in about 10 seconds by running hospital script here
- Students complete task 1 posting messages to chat (from here)
- There will be many times when students are waiting for help or have completed their task, encourage them to go back to their hospital to add more detail
- Once everyone has task one completed complete task 5 – building a simple house
- As an extension complete task 6
- Review the session by asking students to think of one thing they have enjoyed and one thing they had to show resilience with
- Hand out certificates
Equipment I take to a workshop
- 15 x Raspberry Pi (with various hats attached!)
- 15 x power supplies
- 15 x keyboards
- 16 x mice
- 15 x monitor
- 15 x HDMI –> DVI for monitors
- 15 x 4 way power extension lead
- 2 x 15m garden extension lead
- data projector, spare Pi and cables
- 2 x spare Raspberry Pi
- Worksheets