Raspberry Pi is becoming an increasingly popular tool in the classroom. So popular in fact, the company is continuing its “Picademy” training, which has made its way to Birmingham, Alabama, thanks to help from Google.

Google and Raspberry Pi have come together to create a few pop-up “Picademies” across the U.S. These professional development opportunities for educators have yielded what Raspberry Pi is calling, “an explosion of Raspberry Pi Certified Educators.”

“Picademy@Google is for classroom teachers of any subject at primary, secondary or post-16 level,” according to a recent company blog post.

“The courses and workshops in Leeds are run by renowned community member Les Pounder, who gives much of his time to helping adults and children create weird and wonderful projects.” 

The same workshops have been promised for the Birmingham Picademy and educators who want to get a little more practice with some of the new technology available for students, as well as becoming experts in order to pass their knowledge on to other educators looking to use tools like Raspberry Pi in the classroom.

Educators who become certified will be able to (as stated by Raspberry Pi):

• Have a positive impact on their community with Raspberry Pi, perhaps by attending Raspberry Jams, running workshops or speaking at CAS hubs.
• Take an active role in the Raspberry Pi Education Forum & Google + community to help inspire others.
• Create, test and share classroom experiences, lesson plans or entire schemes of work with each other and the wider community.

Raspberry Pi is another company responsible for introducing coding in elementary to middle school classrooms. The company built their own low cost, programmable and portable computer where children can explore ways to program using “Scratch and Python” languages.

“What’s more, the Raspberry Pi has the ability to interact with the outside world, and has been used in a wide array of digital maker projects, from music machines and parent detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infra-red cameras,” according to the company.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor