British foundation Raspberry PI, led by Eben Upton, aims to bring to the classrooms a very cheap computer with a clear objective, so that the kids can learn computing, the guts of the machine, and take advantage of it. The price is 25 dollars, 19 euros, and is a design freed from casing, screen and in general from the peripherals that a computer mounts. It is a plate, as you can see in the image, which includes the intelligence of the device and all the necessary connections to hook it to other devices.
It seems that in 2006 the computer skills of the students at the University of Cambridge were lower than the students of the 1990s and that although the students knew web design they showed little knowledge in computing. The point is that although the machines had grown in functionality and capacity they had increased the price so much that it made it impossible for the kids to experience them as it was in the 80s with the Spectrum and Commodore.
However, the project can die of success because the team has gone on sale and the servers that served them have quickly collapsed.
The small Raspberry Pi claims the basics. It is the size of a credit card and offers the option of plugging it into the television and a keyboard. It is a small computer with the same capabilities as a PC, for example it allows you to work with office applications, games, play high-definition video and most importantly, It is a tool for children to learn to program. The operating system is added through an SD card.
I think that Raspberry is more a concept that time will mark the real use. For some it will be a platform to learn to program, as was the Spectrum or the Commodore for our generation, for others it will be a way of bringing office applications to children with limited resources, etc.
I have signed up for the list of applications and I am waiting for it to be finally achieved or not. At home I think we could take advantage of it and learn concepts of computer programming or architecture. Total, they are 19 euros, much less than it costs us many things with seemingly less value or utility.
The technical characteristics are, for the type A model, a 128 Mb RAM, a USB port, no Ethernet connection and an ARM processor. The operating system must be added via an SD card as we have commented. The B model has 256Mb of RAM, two USB ports and an Ethernet connection. In this case the price goes up to 35 dollars (less than 30 euros).
