Young people taking part in the European Astro Pi Challenge are about to have their computer programs sent to the International Space Station (ISS). Astro Pi is run annually in collaboration by us and ESA Education, and offers two ways to get involved: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab. This year, over 25,000 young people from across Europe and eligible ESA Member States are getting their programs ‘uplinked’ to the Astro Pi computers aboard the ISS, where they will be running over the next few weeks.  Mission Zero teams send their art into space Mission Zero is an exciting activity for ..read more

We love hearing from members of the community and sharing the stories of amazing young people, volunteers, and educators who are using their passion for technology to create positive change in the world around them. Arno helping young coders at the CoderDojo Netherlands tenth birthday celebrations In our latest story, we’re heading to Alkmaar, the Netherlands, to meet Arno and Timo, CoderDojo enthusiasts who have transitioned from club members to supportive mentors. Their journey at CoderDojo and their drive to give back and support the next generation of coders in their community has been an ..read more

It’s been almost a year since we launched our first set of Experience AI resources in the UK, and we’re now working with partner organisations to bring AI literacy to teachers and students all over the world. Developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, Experience AI provides everything that teachers need to confidently deliver engaging lessons that will inspire and educate young people about AI and the role that it could play in their lives. Over the past six months we have been working with partners in Canada, Kenya, Malaysia, and Romania to create bespoke localised version ..read more

Educators around the world are grappling with the problem of whether to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the classroom. As more and more teachers start exploring the ways to use these tools for teaching and learning computing, there is an urgent need to understand the impact of their use to make sure they do not exacerbate the digital divide and leave some students behind. Sri Yash Tadimalla from the University of North Carolina and Dr Mary Lou Maher, Director of Research Community Initiatives at the Computing Research Association, are exploring how student identities affect their in ..read more

As educators, it’s important that we showcase the wide range of career opportunities available in the field of computing, not only to inspire learners, but also to help them feel sure they’re choosing to study a subject that is useful for their future. For example, a survey from the BBC in September 2023 found that more than a quarter of UK teenagers often feel anxious, with “exams and school life” among the main causes. To help young people chart their career paths, we recently hosted two live webinars for National Careers Week in the UK. Our goal for the webinars was to highlight the bread ..read more

Here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we believe that it’s important that our academic research has a practical application. An important area of research we are engaged in is broadening participation in computing education by investigating how the subject can be made more culturally relevant — we have published several studies in this area.  Licensed under the Open Government Licence. However, we know that busy teachers do not have time to keep abreast of all the latest research. This is where our Pedagogy Quick Reads come in. They show teachers how an area of current research either has ..read more

One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s core values is our focus on impact. This means that we are committed to learning from the best available evidence, and to being rigorous and transparent about the difference we’re making. Like many charities, an important part of our approach to achieving and measuring our impact is our theory of change. We are excited to launch a newly refreshed theory of change that reflects our mission and strategy to ensure that young people can realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Read our theory of change What is a the ..read more

We offer Ada Computer Science as a platform to support educators and learners alike. But we don’t take its usefulness for granted: as part of our commitment to impact, we regularly gather user feedback and evaluate all of our products, and Ada is no exception. In this blog, we share some of the feedback we’ve gathered from surveys and interviews with the people using Ada. What’s new on Ada? Ada Computer Science is our online learning platform designed for teachers, students, and anyone interested in learning about computer science. If you’re teaching or studying a computer science qualificati ..read more

AI models for general-purpose programming, such as OpenAI Codex, which powers the AI pair programming tool GitHub Copilot, have the potential to significantly impact how we teach and learn programming.  The basis of these tools is a ‘natural language to code’ approach, also called natural language programming. This allows users to generate code using a simple text-based prompt, such as “Write a simple Python script for a number guessing game”. Programming-specific AI models are trained on vast quantities of text data, including GitHub repositories, to enable users to quickly solve coding ..read more

We’re really excited to see that Experience AI Challenge mentors are starting to submit AI projects created by young people. There’s still time for you to get involved in the Challenge: the submission deadline is 24 May 2024.  If you want to find out more about the Challenge, join our live webinar on Wednesday 3 April at 15:30 BST on our YouTube channel. During the webinar, you’ll have the chance to: Ask your questions live. Get any Challenge-related queries answered by us in real time. Whether you need clarification on any part of the Challenge or just want advice on your young peopl ..read more