A newly released, single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi costs a fraction of the price of an average laptop and helps people learn the basics of hardware, operating systems, and programming.
In an effort to help teachers fold computer science into their curricula, Associate Professor of Computer Science Lisa Singh and Associate Dean Helen Karn will host a workshop about the Raspberry Pi for local teachers from July 10 to 12.
“For basically $100, a kid can conceivably have their own computer at home for a very low cost [with the Raspberry Pi],” Karn said. “And unlike some of the most expensive technologies, which are sort of ‘locked down,’” with the Raspberry Pi “you are only bound by your imagination.
“Whatever you can think of in terms of programming, you can do.”
Able to function on five volts of electricity, the output of a common cell phone charger, the Raspberry Pi is perfect for use in areas where electricity might be unreliable or costly—or, more optimistically, where there has been a movement toward solar energy.
“When the original founders developed it, their goal was to make a computer inexpensive enough that it could be used in developing countries, as well as inexpensive enough that public schools which couldn’t afford to have computers for every student could go to this type of model,” Karn explained.
Funded by the Google CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) program, the three-day seminar hosted by Karn and Singh will be attended by 10 to 15 middle and high school teachers from the Washington, D.C., area—and will be “80 to 90 percent” hands-on, said Singh.
The Georgetown professors will help the teachers, many of whom have a background in biology, physics or another field not directly related to computer science, learn the basics: hardware, operating systems, and computer languages like Scratch and Python.
Ultimately, the teachers will devise lesson plans that incorporate computer science and computational thinking.
“The idea is to [invite] educators who have any science or math background and teach them some of the core concepts of computer science,” said Singh, “and then we can focus in on the actual disciplines they teach [in school for students].
“We thought if we could convince traditional science and math teachers to add modules related to computer science or computational thinking, then their kids would also get exposed to computer science,” she continued.
“[The teachers] get to take the devices and materials home at the end” of the seminar, so ultimately they will have the chance “to work on it and extend it beyond what they do with us.”
Karn and Singh are longtime friends and colleagues. They first met in 2003, when Karn enrolled in a computer science course that Singh was teaching in her first semester at Georgetown.
Last fall they together decided to host a workshop after accidentally running into each other at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Baltimore. Their main goal, said Karn, is to encourage people to be more proactive in how they learn about new technologies and more innovative in how they think about or relate to computer science.
“The idea is to get everyone, especially kids, to not just sit passively while they use an application that somebody else wrote—using Twitter, using a web browser, using email. It’s to get them to say, ‘I could write the next killer app,’” Karn said.
“We’ve gotten away from that. We [used to think this way] back in the days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, writing software, but now it’s ‘here’s a box, I turn it on and I don’t know or understand how it works; I just use it,’” she continued. “That limits you with what someone else has said this thing can do.”
Because the Raspberry Pi is low-cost and open-source, Karn and Singh also believe it gives people who have long been overlooked in the world of computing some new measure of power and agency.
“Whether it’s computer science, computer engineering, or bioinformatics, there are so many voices that are not being heard, particularly [those belonging to] women and minorities,” Karn said. “One of the reasons why we tried to focus on recruiting teachers from Washington, D.C., is to get these voices heard.
“That really fits with Georgetown’s mission of social justice—of working with people who are at the margins and being more inclusive.”