Digital pi castlemilk case study

Digital Pi – Castlemilk
A Digital Participation Event

INTRODUCTION
Seric Systems and BeYonder put together and delivered a Digital Participation event at Castlemilk High School for the week commencing 13th October 2014 for 5 consecutive days.
The aim of the event was to introduce people to aspects of computing in an understandable and relatable way as well as creating an opportunity to experience technology for fun as well as potential future use. For this purpose we used the Raspberry Pi which is a British invented & manufactured credit card sized computer which was developed to help get children into coding. It is not only versatile it is reasonably inexpensive.
The format for the week was based around two three-hour sessions per day with an hour for each of three activities. The activities were:
 Get into Coding with Scratch
 Creative Expression with Minecraft
 The Slow Game
We had groups of up to ten in each session. Each group was divided into pairs and put together with a mentor. The groups themselves were made up of students from local primary and secondary schools as well as local community organisations including the Jeely Piece Club and Jobs in Business Glasgow. The volunteers comprised of professionals and students.
In this case study we will be looking in detail at the goals and accomplishments of the event.
Using the Raspberry Pi we ran an event for 5 days to teach young people coding, creative design and manipulating the electronic environment.

What is a Raspberry Pi?
It seems to be prudent at this stage to introduce the Raspberry Pi. If you have a good idea about what these fantastic little devices are all about then please go ahead and skip this page. However if not then it may be best summed up with a quote from the Raspberry Pi website:
“The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It is a capable little computer which can be used in electronics projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn how computers work, how to manipulate the electronic world around them, and how to program.” (www.raspberrypi.org, 2014)
This device can and is being used all over the country to encourage kids into computing. It’s very easy to set-up. In fact here is a short video with my 6 year old daughter doing just that: youtu.be/l9uqo93SPHE?a
Installing the operating system is also quite easy to do as long as you look for an SD/MicroSD card with NOOBs installed. This stands for “New Out Of the Box Software.” It has several different operating systems pre-packaged and you literally just need to select one. The one that I chose was Raspbian and it came bundled with Scratch. We used that for the coding activity. There is a free (if older) version of Minecraft you can download for free which we used for creative expression. The other activity we did was based around a program called Motion. This looks for movement in front of a camera and triggers actions. This we used to explain how to manipulate the electronic world.

Goals & Accomplishments
We set out with one clear objective. We wanted to show people how easy it was to get into the world of technology. While doing this we encouraged teamwork, communication, reflective practice, creativity and innovative thought. The last two may sound out of place when we are dealing with technology but they are perhaps the most important skills. Without considering and apply creativity and innovative thought, solving problems in the world becomes much harder.
We structured the day so that people worked in teams of two with a mentor through all three activities. The mentors were there to encourage problem solving, facilitation and support. We encouraged them to get the pairs to work collaboratively and try to explore the possibilities of what they were learning. In the coding activity for example the students were coming up with ways they wanted to use their new skills before they had even finished the tutorial ranging from making simple games to telling an interactive story.
We used Minecraft to stimulate the creative side of the students. With a group of seven to nine year olds we had a castle building competition. It was very interesting to see the finished results, but it was more interesting to see the dynamic between the pairs evolve. This was in terms of making decisions about design and how much time each person could spend on developing the building. I personally observed a team of girls working much better together in comparison to teams on either side and I was impressed as to how they considered each other’s ideas quite thoughtfully. They split the controls on several occasions ensuring fairness throughout the task which I thought was innovative and they seemed to have good fun doing it.
To get the students into how you can manipulate the electronic environment we used a package called Motion which is free to download and a webcam. Motion looks to see how many pixels have changed from one frame to the next and then takes a picture and video. Based on certain actions like motion being detected or a picture being saved you can also trigger other events. A common one is to send an alert via email or SMS with a picture or video showing what the camera has picked up. In our case we simply set off a buzzer if motion was detected. People came up with some clever uses such as being used as a security camera to helping to alert someone if an elderly relative with dementia had left their home.
We had overwhelmingly positive feedback and both students and mentors got something out of the week. Additionally we managed to form a working group to help two students progress a project for helping people with Dyslexia. This group now has 4 students participating with one of them joining through attending the Digital Inclusion Week. The students work cross collaboratively from 1st year through to 6th year demonstrating that age is not a factor if the group are focused on a common purpose. The local schools involved are now very interested in continuing to run events and plans are afoot for the start of next year.

Results & Feedback
We had the students fill evaluation forms which recorded where they thought they were at the start of an activity and then where they were after. They self-assessed out of 10. Below are three graphs showing the results for the three different activities for one session.
Coding Skills with Scratch – most of the students in this group had little to no experience with coding.
Creative Design – most of the students here had worked with Minecraft before so there is a marked difference in the results.
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STUDENTSCoding Skills for Pupils A-J
Skills Before
Skills After
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STUDENTSCreative Design Skills for Pupils A-J
Skills Before
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Electronic Environment Manipulation – was more complex than the other two exercises in terms of what the student had to understand. They needed to interact with Linux both via the command line and GUI and had to understand the process and nature of the package Motion.
Included in the feedback form we asked for pretty much the most important thing – how fun the day was! The results of this poll out of 10 are shown below:
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PUPILEnvironment Manipulation Skills for Pupils A-J
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JHow much fun was the course
Results & Feedback – Continued 1

It was a pleasure to work with so many intelligent and bright young people. Here are a few quotes they had about the day based on “Please write any further comments below (How will you make use of the new skills in future)”
Results & Feedback – Continued 2
“Today was excellent and so much fun”
“I want to make my own game called ‘Minecraft in the future’”
“Make a scary game”
“Brilliant”
“Use it to secure my house”
“Use the skills I have learnt in my career in childcare”
“It was really good fun!”
“Use it for practical jokes”
“It was so good!”
“To play and use them to get a job in the future”
“It was great, I’d like to make a game”
“How do I get one of these? I want”
“I didn’t know this before, but I can use it to help the kids now”

Scratch
We used the graphical programming language Scratch which comes pre-installed with Raspbian when installed from NOOBS. We used a basic tutorial from MIT online here http://bit.ly/1FHdENo but there are any number of great tutorials online both in PDF form and video. We were quite flexible with how this session went and tried to work with the kids to do something that interested them like making the sprites race, dance or tell a story.
The students worked in teams of two with a volunteer mentor.

Creative Design
For the Creative Design activity we used Minecraft to get the teams working together. For the younger groups we got them building castles.

Environment Manipulation
We used the Pi with a package called motion and played something called The Slow Game. This got the students interacting with Linux and understanding the way you can control the sensitivity of the camera. All of this was deigned to demonstrate how easy it was to take a signal and use it as a trigger for certain actions.

Here is some of the feedback from our volunteer mentors:
Q. Why did you get involved?
Q. What key thing did you take away from the experience?
Q. What was you memorable moment?
“I got involved as we are supporting Seric with another project. We love Colin’s passion and drive to make digital tech accessible and available to as many user groups and individuals as possible. Therefore we were delighted to be able to provide support and volunteer our time and services and use our resources to empower the project to succeed.” Chrissy
“My university mentor Colin Crook invited me knowing that I was interested in the educational aspects of the digital sector. In addition I enjoy teaching others and believe Digital/IT inclusion initiatives benefit all that take part.” Barry
“I got involved because I thought it was a superb idea and I wanted to help out With Beyonder.” Johnny
“That I am not as technically deficient as I presumed myself to be. To overcome my own learning barriers when presented with something far out of my comfort zone.” Chrissy
“This experience further enhanced my belief that if you get children or young adults at the right age they learn rapidly and find it easier to absorb knowledge. These kids are the engineers of the future.” Barry
“The key thing I took from the experience is how adaptable young people are to new technology.” Johnny
Mentor Feedback
“The most memorable moment apart from watching people have fun learning new skills was working with them to connect as to how learning these skills can complement and enhance their career and life choices. One young woman in particular who is currently unemployed really came to life when we explored how learning and using digital skills would benefit the career path she has chosen. Through discussion it not only highlighted the level of learning she would need to undertake but by understanding how digital tech and aptitude can support her in her research as well as connecting with her client group, making her now feel from moving from a huge challenge to undertaking a challenge that she could believe that she could succeed in.” Chrissy
“There were many memorable moments but in the main it was seeing the smiling bright kids and teenagers absorbing technology with ease. It was all a very memorable experience not just a moment.” Barry
“Watching how proficient the young people were with the tasks that they were given.” Johnny

Lessons Learned
Although we have experience in setting up and running other Digital Participation events this is the first time we have put on one with the Raspberry Pi. We have identified a few areas which next time we will concentrate more on. The project also aligns with achieved experiences and outcomes for Curriculum for Excellence.
We would like to tailor the feedback more on how the groups worked together rather than focusing solely on the skills they are gaining. There were natural methods that developed with the mentors as they were helping the teams. This was in terms of facilitating the communication and making sure everyone got their fair shot. The teams by working with the mentor then gain skills necessary for working with other people.
The version of Minecraft on the Pi was older than what many of the students were used to which elicited some dissatisfaction in the students. However through mentor discussion we were able to discuss it in context of real life events where it can be valuable to gain skills and understanding of pre dated concepts as well as the most up to date to strengthen capability and skill set. When we were able to demonstrate such examples through various career sectors and where knowing and being capable of such skills is an asset, the children were eager to get into a discussion around example ideas that they would see this as a clear benefit. Some were very proficient with the program already. Mostly though everyone was happy to work with it once they got into the exercise. For future projects we will use both early and up to date technology to use this now as a learning example of best practice and to demonstrate diversity and capability.
With Scratch we started right at the beginning and some students had used it before. We adapted quickly to this by setting a small project to do, but it would have been beneficial to begin with to have a few projects ready and waiting for this eventuality.
Overall the week went extremely well and we are looking at running more events in the local area with the schools involved.

Contact Details
If you would like to find out more information please contact colin.crook@seric.co.uk
Or
chrissy@beyonder.org.uk

Digital pi castlemilk case study

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