Investing in Raspberry Pi for Children's Education over Buying Windows PCs

A couple of days ago, I published an article titled “A 5-Year-Old Uses It to Learn Programming, and It Only Takes 100 Seconds to Assemble This Computer!” discussing how a 5-year-old can assemble a computer in just 100 seconds, and it is extremely cheap, costing only $149. After sharing it in a group chat, I immediately faced criticism from tech-savvy dads, who pointed out that it’s just a Raspberry Pi, and you can easily assemble a few components yourself!

Yes, the children’s microcomputer Kano, stripped of its fancy casing and various components, the most crucial part is actually the Raspberry Pi board. You can get it for less than $40, not even $99 or $149.

Is Raspberry Pi a pie made of raspberries? Is it delicious? NO! NO! NO! Raspberry Pi is the name of a computer board.

The board on the right is the Raspberry Pi, about the size of our credit card, but it is a microcomputer! It can go online, send and receive emails, play programming games, and more. Just imagine being able to carry a computer in your pocket; how cool is that?

This board was invented by Eben Upton, the director of computer science at St. John’s College, Cambridge University. The motivation was that those freshmen entering the computer science department at Cambridge with A-Level results only knew how to use Word and Excel.

Their level of computing knowledge made Upton and his colleagues want to cry. You have to understand that in their time, computer science students were all geeks who grew up playing with Unix systems and compilers. Now, these kids only know how to use a weak version of Windows, which is quite frustrating!

Dr. Eben Upton

Upton recalled his childhood in the 1980s, a time when British men enjoyed modifying cars and fixing refrigerators. Upton’s father was a linguistics professor who, when not teaching, would take his sons apart and reassemble engines or build bizarre appliances with relays. I wonder what their mother thought of that. It was during this era that many computers designed for teenagers, such as the Commodore 64 and BBC Micro, appeared on the market. Although these computers had average performance and sometimes had bugs, they were cheap, and if they broke, it wasn’t a big deal, allowing kids to experiment freely.

In 1988, at just 10 years old, Eben Upton had his own computer—a battered second-hand BBC Micro. This computer was somewhat similar to the learning machines popular in China earlier, pre-installed with many games and educational software. But for a kid like Upton, there was plenty of room for creativity. It had a built-in programming environment and opened up most device interfaces, allowing for low-level programming of hardware interfaces to unleash the computer’s potential.Upton quickly mastered the programming language and developed some games. It was his childhood experience of playing with computers and writing code that led to his achievements today.

BBC Micro Computer

By 2006, home computers were already widespread, so why were students’ computing skills still so poor?

This computer is not the same as that computer. Upton said, “Today’s children do not have the same experience of playing with computers as I did in my childhood. The BBC Micro I played with was a programmable computer, while today’s children are often just playing with the surface of computer technology. Moreover, these kids spend a lot of time on their phones, playing games, and surfing the internet.”

Indeed, compared to Upton’s youth, the freshmen at Cambridge have access to much more powerful computers. These computers are equipped with Windows systems, which are far more powerful than the BBC Micro. However, parents who spend a lot of money on high-performance computers do not want their kids to mess around. Kids cannot experiment with crazy ideas like they did with their BBC Micro. Plus, now that everything is on Windows, which seems friendly, it hides the real workings of the computer behind the scenes, and programming requires additional costs.

This is not acceptable! How can the British Empire compete with Americans, Chinese, and Indians in the future? So, Upton began to work with colleagues to develop a chip similar to the BBC Micro computer he played with as a child.

They gave the chip a cute name “Raspberry”; I suspect it was because one of them liked eating raspberries. Since the first prototype only supported the Python programming language, “Pi” was added to represent Python. Thus, the “Raspberry Pi” was born. Upton established the charitable “Raspberry Pi Foundation” in 2009, which became the main organization for developing Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi is not much larger than a credit card and costs only $35. Upton put in a lot of effort to reduce the cost of the Raspberry Pi to make it affordable for most children. The initial product was a circuit board equipped with a smartphone processor and 256 MB of RAM, providing users with USB ports, a storage card slot, general-purpose input/output ports (GPIO for connecting other devices), Ethernet ports, HDMI ports, and analog video ports (for connecting to TVs or computer monitors). By importing the Debian operating system into the SD card, the credit card-sized Raspberry Pi computer combined with the most popular open-source Linux system. Upton said, “We are committed to creating affordable, powerful, and fun products.”

Supercomputer built with Raspberry Pi

It took six years to develop. Unexpectedly, once it was launched, it became a global sensation, and the website crashed due to traffic. Surprisingly, the impact of Raspberry Pi far exceeded the educational field. Geeks shared their Raspberry Pi development projects online, and various companies used Raspberry Pi for industrial production. Raspberry Pi was even used in space exploration projects. Upton’s simple computer inadvertently filled the market gap for hardware development. Those suppliers supporting Upton also received millions of orders. But for Upton, he probably no longer needs to worry about kids not being able to play with computers.

In the UK, Raspberry Pi plays an increasingly important role in school education. Just a ten-minute walk from the Raspberry Pi company headquarters, there is St. John’s College, where over 25 primary school students are busy writing code and tinkering with computers in a lunch programming club activity.

The Raspberry Pi computer can run a free children’s programming software called Scratch, specifically Scratch 1.4 version. Once familiar with Scratch, children can then move on to Python programming. If you haven’t bought your child a personal computer yet, I recommend getting a Raspberry Pi! After all, installing the Linux system comes with all educational software, allowing them to learn programming safely while also developing their hands-on skills and English (currently, the Linux system is entirely in English, with simple words that those with a basic understanding of English can manage). The key is that it’s very cheap, and you can experiment without worrying about damaging it.

If you have any questions about Raspberry Pi, feel free to leave a comment, and I will respond promptly!