Collaboration between Manchester Raspberry Jam and the STEM Network team at MOSI led towards the Pi-lot of something we would like to see turn it to an ongoing project – Raspberry Jam for schools. Thanks to those in the intersection of STEM Ambassadors and Raspberry Jam regulars for taking the time to volunteer to make this event happen – Ben, Aaron, Lisa & Dan.
The aim of the event was to explore what the technology can do, to get creative with Raspberry Pi and have some fun along the way! With the support and guidance of our dedicated STEM Ambassador volunteers who were present throughout the day, students were guided through setting up a Raspberry Pi, exploring two basic programming languages (Scratch and Python) and using PiFace – the interface which allows written programmes to interact with the outside world.
The Madlab, who kindly host our Raspberry Jams as well as many other events, blogged about 13 year old Amy Mather’s presentation on her Conway’s Game of Life project – given at the Raspberry Jamboree and the Manchester Girl Geeks Barcamp:
It’s a huge privilege for us to see so many people come together at MadLab, learning new skills and finding whole new areas of interests through the many and varied groups that meet here. This certainly holds true in the case of Amy Mather.
The day kicked off at 10.30 with an opening talk from organiser Alan O’Donahoe, followed by a wonderful keynote from BBC Micro pioneer Steve Furber. The first session of talks featured Andrew Robinson (creator of PiFace), Carrie Anne Philbin (from Geek Gurl Diaries) and CERN‘s William Bell (talking about MagPi).
Liz from the Raspberry Pi Foundation said she’d had more emails about Amy’s talk the week after the Jamboree than anything else.
Amy Mather is thirteen years old. She made a presentation at last week’s Raspberry Jamboree in Manchester, where she explains how she got into programming and why she loves it. Amy walks us through Conway’s Game of Life, which she ends up building … well, I won’t spoil it for you. Watch this one all the way through; it’s worth it.
Alan, the organiser of the Raspberry Jamboree, blogged his round-up of events on the Raspberry Jam network website:
A total of 365 people attended our Raspberry Jamboree, some of them travelling from across Europe and the Middle East and 140 registered for our webcast with about 50 – 80 people watching throughout the day.
An interesting article from Jina Kim about her experience at ‘Girl Geeks visit Raspberry Jam’:
A soul searching journey by a New Yorker
When I heard about the RaspberryPi Jam, I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I remembered programming from my days as a Java Programmer. But what is physical computing?
Astonishing! What an accomplishment. Thanks personally to Eben, Liz, Pete, Rob and all those involved in the foundation, to Alan O’Donahoe for his efforts with the Jam and Jamboree, to Paul Peech for the logo, the website, the Pibow and the Picade, and to everyone else who supported the Pi through its first year out in the open. It’s been an amazing year – here’s to many more!
Read the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s messages on their blog post » Happy Birthday to us! (raspberrypi.org)
Interesting short post from Dad Jammer Dave Potts about playing with Minecraft at McrRaspJam IX:
It was interesting to have the RaspberryPi running as a man-in-the-middle without any significant interruptions to the game play. As a next step I think we are going to try and find a third party library to help with the wire tapping.
