You might think using Raspberry Pi’s in the primary classroom and learning python programming and circuitry is advanced even for Year 6 students. Not for the schools participating in Scitech’s Future Computing program!
Offered to one primary school each calendar year in the Pilbara region in the north-west of Western Australia, the Future Computing program supports students’ and teachers’ engagement in Digital Technologies, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and physical computing.
Through partnering with Mitsui Iron Ore Development, Scitech provides the focus school with fully funded Raspberry Pi (PiTop[4]) computers, Foundation kits and robotics accessories. Participating teachers receive support through school visits, regular online consultations and classroom collaborations with Scitech’s professional learning team across the school year.
Coaching and hands-on workshops allow teachers to gain experience in planning and delivering physical computing lessons in their classroom, while students engage in problem-solving and collaborative learning through coding activities with the Raspberry Pi technology. These activities include Python coding of user interactive texts, exploring electronic components found in the Pi-top[4] Foundation kits, and designing coding and building real world solutions to problems.
Through Future Computing, students can learn more about the application of 21st century skills than they might typically have access to in the classroom, while being provided with the opportunity to explore their regular curriculum in deeply meaningful ways, the activities encourage a problem-solving mindset, where students’ explore options, meet obstacles and find solutions through perseverance. Rather than using instruction, teachers prompt students to try different methods to find the solution, meaning students want to continue learning and extending themselves.
Scitech Professional Learning Consultant Lucas Black said.
In 2023, Scitech launched the program’s first ever interschool Pi-Jam Day, bringing together St Paul’s Primary School students and students from the previous year’s focus school, Tambrey Primary School. Students were challenged to build and code an interactive colour changing mood lantern using the Raspberry Pi technology, demonstrating the coding skills they have learnt through the program.
Students amazed representatives from Mitsui by showing their coding and problem-solving skills and their creative solutions including using components such as LED’s, potentiometers, ultrasonic sensors, sound sensors and switches to control the mood lights – with some students even integrating light sensors to ensure the LEDs would automatically switch off when the sun rose.
The program has been amazing for the teachers and the children. This type of approach and content was new for the school, but Scitech stepped us through it with resources and teacher support.
St Paul’s Primary School Assistant Principal Eleanor Riddell said
By engaging in 21st century skills through using the Raspberry Pi technology in the Future Computing program, students learn that being persistent with problem-solving pays off and leads to creative and innovative results, which will benefit them throughout their school education and beyond.
As a not-for-profit organisation, for more than three decades Scitech has brought engaging and entertaining science experiences to everyone from adventure-ready kids to inquisitive adults – igniting a lifelong curiosity in the process.
Scitech’s engagement with STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – dates back to before the term even existed.
