In both England and globally, there are few new AI-based curricula being introduced and the drive for teachers and students to learn about AI in schools is lagging, with limited initiatives supporting teachers in what to teach and how to teach it. At the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, we decided it was time to investigate this missing link of teaching about AI, and specifically to discover what the teachers who are leading the way in this topic are doing in their classrooms.  

A day of sharing and activities in Cambridge

We organised a day-long, face-to-face symposium with educators who have already started to think deeply about teaching about AI, have started to create teaching resources, and are starting to teach about AI in their classrooms. The event was held in Cambridge, England, on 1 February 2025, at the head office of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. 

Over 150 educators and researchers applied to take part in the symposium. With only 50 places available, we followed a detailed protocol, whereby those who had the most experience teaching about AI in schools were selected. We also made sure that educators and researchers from different teaching contexts were selected so that there was a good mix of primary to further education phases represented. Educators and researchers from England, Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland were invited and gathered to share about their experiences. One of our main aims was to build a community of early adopters who have started along the road of classroom-based AI curriculum design and delivery.

Inspiration, examples, and expertise

To inspire the attendees with an international perspective of the topics being discussed, Professor Matti Tedre, a visiting academic from Finland, gave a brief overview of the approach to teaching about AI and resources that his research team have developed. In Finland, there is no compulsory distinct computing topic taught, so AI is taught about in other subjects, such as history. Matti showcased tools and approaches developed from the Generation AI research programme in Finland. You can read about the Finnish research programme and Matti’s two month visit to the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre in our blog. 

Attendees were asked to talk about, share, and analyse their teaching materials. To model how to analyse resources, Ben Garside from the Raspberry Pi Foundation modelled how to complete the activities using the Experience AI resources as an example. The Experience AI materials have been co-created with Google DeepMind and are a suite of free classroom resources, teacher professional development, and hands-on activities designed to help teachers confidently deliver AI lessons. Aimed at learners aged 11 to 14, the materials are informed by the AI education framework developed at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre and are grounded in real-world contexts. We’ve recently released new lessons on AI safety, and we’ve localised the resources for use in many countries including Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.

In the morning session, Ben exemplified how to talk about and share learning objectives, concepts, and research underpinning materials using the Experience AI resources and in the afternoon he discussed how he had mapped the Experience AI materials to the UNESCO AI competency framework for students.

Kelly Shiohira, from UNESCO, kindly attended our session, and gave an invaluable insight into the UNESCO AI competency framework for students. Kelly is one of the framework’s authors and her presentation helped teachers understand how the materials had been developed. The attendees then used the framework to analyse their resources, to identify gaps and to explore what progression might look like in the teaching of AI.

Throughout the day, the teachers worked together to share their experience of teaching about AI. They considered the concepts and learning objectives taught, what progression might look like, what the challenges and opportunities were of teaching about AI, what research informed the resources and what research needs to be done to help improve the teaching and learning of AI.

What next?

We are now analysing the vast amount of data that we gathered from the day and we will share this with the symposium participants before we share it with a wider audience. What is clear from our symposium is that teachers have crucial insights into what should be taught to students about AI, and how, and we are greatly looking forward to continuing this journey with them.

As well as the symposium, we are also conducting academic research in this area, you can read more about this in our Annual Report and on our research webpages. We will also be consulting with teachers and AI experts. If you’d like to ensure you are sent links to these blog posts, then sign up to our newsletter. If you’d like to take part in our research and potentially be interviewed about your perspectives on curriculum in AI, then contact us at: rpcerc-enquiries@cst.cam.ac.uk 

We also are sharing the research being done by ourselves and other researchers in the field at our research seminars. This year, our seminar series is on teaching about AI and data science in schools. Please do sign up and come along, or watch some of the presentations that have already been delivered by the amazing research teams who are endeavouring to discover what we should be teaching about AI and how in schools

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Volunteer-led Coolest Projects events

Teams of marvellous volunteers organise and run the events in the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Milan! They are doing incredible work to give children in their regions the chance to present their tech creations and be celebrated for their skills and creativity.

And we want to support you in our global community to do the same: organise your own regional Coolest Projects events, wherever you are, so that young people near you can showcase their work and be inspired by others’ inventions.

5 reasons to host your own Coolest Projects event

Running your own Coolest Projects is your chance to:

1. Celebrate the creativity of young creators
2. Grow your local coding and volunteer community
3. Engage parents and educators with technology
4. Develop connections with local businesses
5. Build the worldwide network of Coolest Projects participants, partners, and volunteers

The Coolest Projects Regional Handbook

We’ve put together a free Coolest Projects Regional Handbook that walks you through everything you need to organise your own Coolest Projects event!

Our brand-new handbook brings together everything you need to plan, prepare for, and host your own regional Coolest Projects event. It includes practical advice on:

• Building your Coolest Projects team
• Managing an event budget
• Choosing a venue
• Sponsorship and partner management
• Communications and marketing
• Coolest Projects licensing

Your regional event does not have to be large or formal — it can be as big or small as your community’s volunteers want it to be, and tailored to your community’s needs and interests.

Like the volunteer teams who already run regional Coolest Projects, you too can run your own event — with our handbook as guidance.

Download your free handbook now!

If you’re interested in bringing Coolest Projects to your community, email us at hello@coolestprojects.org so we can connect you to other volunteers in your region who have expressed their interest to us! Letting us know you want to be involved will also enable us to give you more support while you’re getting started.

You’ve only got a little time left to register your idea

To participate in this year’s Coolest Projects, just register your project idea by the deadline (see below)! And don’t fret: you don’t have to have started your project to register, just the idea is enough.

If you don’t want to present something by yourself, you can register in a team of up to five members.

And you don’t need to have finished your project to present it at the event, because the most important thing is to showcase your love and enthusiasm for tech!

Registration deadlines:

• UK (Manchester) — 10 Feb 2019
• USA (Santa Ana, CA) — 15 Feb 2019
• International (Dublin, Ireland) — 14 April 2019

Registration for all Coolest Projects events is free! And you’re also more than welcome to visit and check out the amazing projects without submitting your own. For more information, and to get your free visitor tickets, visit the Coolest Projects website and select your nearest event.

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Celebrating the Apollo 11 moon landing

Nearly 50 years ago, humankind took one giant leap and landed on the moon for the first time. The endeavour involved an incredible amount of technological innovation that, amongst other things, helped set the stage for modern coding.

To celebrate this amazing feat, Code Club Australia are hosting Moonhack, an annual world record attempt to get as many young people as possible coding space-themed projects over 24 hours. This year, Moonhack is even bigger and better, and we want you to take part!

Moonhack past and present

The first Moonhack took place in 2016 in Sydney, Australia, and has since spread across the globe. More than 28000 young people from 56 countries took part last year, from Syria to South Korea and Croatia to Guatemala.

This year, the aim is to break that world record with 50000 young people — the equivalent of the population of a small town — coding over 24 hours!

Get involved

Taking part in Moonhack is super simple: code a space-themed project and submit it on 20 July, the anniversary of the moon landing. Young people from 8 to 18 can take part, and Moonhack is open to everyone, wherever you are in the world.

The event is perfect for Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and Raspberry Jams looking for a new challenge, but you can also take part at home with your family. Or, if you have access to a great venue, you could also host a Moonhackathon event and invite young people from your community to get involved — the Moonhack team is offering online resources to help you do this.

On the Moonhack website, you’ll find four simple, astro-themed projects to choose from, one each for Scratch, Python, micro:bit, and Gamefroot. If your young coders are feeling adventurous, they can also create their own space-themed projects: last year we saw some amazing creations, from a ‘dogs vs aliens’ game to lunar football!

For many young people, Moonhack falls in the last week of term, so it’s a perfect activity to celebrate the end of the academic year. If you’re in a part of the world that’s already on break from school, you can hold a Moonhack coding party, which is a great way to keep coding over the holidays!

To register to take part in Moonhack, head over to moonhack.com and fill in your details. If you’re interested in hosting a Moonhackathon, you can also download an information pack here.

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It will be a chance for people of all ages and skill levels to have a go at getting creative with tech! Raspberry Fields is a celebration of all that our digital makers have already learnt and achieved, whether through taking part in Code Clubs, CoderDojos, or Raspberry Jams, or through trying our resources at home.

We have a packed festival programme of exciting activities, talks, and shows for you to experience! So clear the weekend of 30 June and 1 July, because you won’t want to miss a thing.

Saturday

On Saturday, we’ll be welcoming two very special acts to the Raspberry Fields stage.

Neil Monteiro

Originally trained as a physicist, Neil is famous for his live shows exploring the power of scientific thinking and how it helps us tell the difference between the real and the impossible.

Ada.Ada.Ada

The spellbinding interactive show about computing pioneer Ada Lovelace — catch a sneak peek here!

Sunday

On Sunday, “Science Museum meets Top Gear” as Brainiac Live! takes to the stage to close Raspberry Fields in style.

Brainiac Live!

Strap on your safety goggles — due to popular demand science’s greatest and most volatile live show arrives with a vengeance. The West End and international touring favourite is coming to Raspberry Fields!

More mischievous than ever before, Brainiac Live! will take you on a breathless ride through the wild world of the weird and wonderful. Watch from the safety of your seat as the Brainiacs fearlessly delve into the mysteries of science and do all those things on stage that you’re too scared to do at home!

Weekend highlights

And that’s not all — we’ll also be welcoming some very special guests who will display their projects throughout the weekend. These include:

The Cauldron

Brew potions with molecular mixology and responsive magic wands using science and technology, and bring the magic from fantasy books to life in this immersive, interactive experience! Learn more about The Cauldron here.

The mechanical Umbrella Tree

The Umbrella Tree is a botanical, mechanical contraption designed to bemuse, baffle, delight, and amuse all ages. Audiences discover it in the landscape singing to itself and dancing its strange mechanical ballet. The four-metre high structure weaves a creaky choreography of mechanically operated umbrellas, lights, and smoke.

Museum in a Box

Museum in a Box puts museum collections and expert knowledge into your hands, wherever you are in the world. It’s an intriguing and interactive mix of replica objects and contextual content from museum curators and educators, directly at the tips of your fingers!

And there’s still more to discover

Alongside these exciting and explosive performances and displays, we’ll be hosting loads of amazing projects and hands-on activities built by our awesome community of young people and enthusiasts, as well as licensed resellers for you to get all the latest kit and gadgets!

If you’re wondering about bringing along young children or less technologically minded family members or friends, there’ll be plenty for them to enjoy — with lots of festival-themed activities such as face painting, fun performances, free giveaways, and delicious food, Raspberry Fields will have something for everyone!

Tickets!

Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss out — buy your tickets here today!

Fancy helping out? Find out about our volunteering opportunities.

The post Look who’s coming to Raspberry Fields 2018! appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

What is Coolest Projects?

Coolest Projects is a world-leading showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers, and entrepreneurs. The event is both a competition and an exhibition to give young digital makers aged 7 to 17 a platform to celebrate their successes, creativity, and ingenuity.

In 2012, Coolest Projects was conceived as an opportunity for CoderDojo Ninjas to showcase their work and for supporters to acknowledge these achievements. Week after week, Ninjas would meet up to work diligently on their projects, hacks, and code; however, it can be difficult for them to see their long-term progress on a project when they’re concentrating on its details on a weekly basis. Coolest Projects became a dedicated time each year for Ninjas and supporters to reflect, celebrate, and share both the achievements and challenges of the maker’s journey.

Coolest Projects North America

Not only is Coolest Projects expanding to North America, it’s also expanding its participant pool! Members of our team have met so many amazing young people creating in all areas of the world, that it simply made sense to widen our outreach to include Code Clubs, students of Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, and members of the Raspberry Jam community at large as well as CoderDojo attendees.

Exhibit and attend Coolest Projects

Coolest Projects is a free, family- and educator-friendly event. Young people can apply to exhibit their projects, and the general public can register to attend this one-day event. Be sure to register today, because you make Coolest Projects what it is: the coolest.

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CERN is the heart of particle physics research, where scientists are working to discover new phenomena using high-energy equipment. These research challenges have driven inventions, such as the World Wide Web and superconducting magnets used by the Large Hadron Collider. Theoretical calculations and experimental analyses are both heavily reliant on computer programming, so it’s a great place to host a Raspberry Pi programming event.

Babbage outside CERN

This year, Brice Copy organised a Coding Pi Science event on the 7th and 8th of October. Working together with long-term Pi supporter Alan McCullagh, he invited three teams to prepare kits to build and program with attendees. To motivate the teams and the other attendees, there were a series of talks on Friday evening; these included a general introduction to the CERN Micro Club and the EU Code Week, as well as a motivational talk on why computer programming is so important for scientific research. Each team then gave an overview of their project, in preparation for the workshop the next day.

On Saturday morning, the teams, volunteers, children, parents, and teachers started to build a muon detector (Muon Hunter), a robotic arm (Poppy Ergo Jr.), or a programmable WiFi car (GianoPi). The idea was to build a kit together with the team leaders and other volunteers, and then take the kit home to program it. These three kits provide different challenges: the Muon Hunter kit requires some soldering and uses a C programming interface, the Poppy Ergo Jr. snaps together and is driven using Snap, and the GianoPi needs soldering and is controlled by Blockly.

Programming Poppy Ergo Jr. in MicroClub Robotics

The Muon Hunter was designed by Mihaly Vadai, in collaboration with the CERN Micro Club. The kit includes two Geiger-Müller tubes to detect ionising radiation, a circuit board that produces the 400 volts needed to bias the tubes and read the signals, and an ARM microcontroller to form the coincidence between the two tubes. The circuit board can be directly connected to a Raspberry Pi to read out the signals and produce plots of the data.

Poppy Ergo Jr. was invented by the Flowers team at Inria Bordeaux, and presented by Stephanie Noirpoudre and Theo Segonds. Their projects are designed to encourage children to learn about computer programming through interacting with robots. The kit includes 3D-printed parts and several servo motors controlled by a Raspberry Pi mounted in the base of the robot. A Camera Module can be used to check the colour of objects, and forms part of their Snap programming examples.

GianoPi was designed by Stefania Saladino. It consist of four servo motors, multi-directional wheels, an ultrasonic sensor, a Pi Zero, a servo control HAT from Adafruit, a WiFi adapter, a battery pack, and some electronics to allow the kit to be easily turned on or off. Brice Copy created the software to interface with the GianoPi using Raspbuggy, which is a Blocky application. Similar to the Poppy Ergo Jr., the GianoPi is controlled over a network connection, allowing the robot to be remotely accessed.

Building GianoPi at the CERN IdeaSquare

It was an engaging weekend of soldering, building, and programming; hopefully, these kits will encourage even more exciting projects in the future. Alan certainly had fun trying to find a good place to put Babbage, too…

Babbage gets everywhere…

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This day of tinkering shenanigans is in preparation for our brand new programme for young people, which will be launching soon. If you’d like to apply, you need to be aged between 12 and 18, living in the UK, and free on Tuesday 23rd August 2016. You also need to be comfortable in front of a camera. We’ll be catching all the action throughout the whole day and making videos to share with the world, so we need smiley faces! If you love tinkering and getting creative, then this is for you. You don’t need any experience with computers or electronics; this is for anybody who enjoys making things.

We’ll cover your travel costs, and if you are coming a really long way we can provide accommodation for you and a parent or guardian. Accompanying adults will get the day to themselves to do whatever they please around Cambridge: it’s a beautiful place with lots to see.

Makers make!

In order to bag an invitation, you’ll need to send our judges a mini video about yourself. This video is your chance to shine, so get creative! (Don’t worry about special equipment – we’re expecting most of you to shoot on your phones.)

The video should be no longer than 30-60 seconds. It should introduce you and give us a little run down of what you like making and doing. That can be making cake, videos, clothes, robots, or even just making a mess. Please include anything else you think will entertain us. If you are entering in a group with friends, then feel free to get together for your filming session, but remember that each person must submit an individual video of themselves. Group videos will not be accepted: you all need to have your own 60 seconds in the spotlight.

Applications must be received by midnight on Sunday 7th August.

Submit your video and details to us via the Digital Making Day form.

If you have any questions email digitalmakingday@raspberrypi.org.

Don’t forget to spread the word to anyone else who may want to take part!

The gif that never grows old!

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