What is it?
“Raspberry Pi, A Credit Card Sized Computer” – Patrick K.
Historically, our Raspberry Pi After School program is known for its ability to bring computer science STEM education to 4th-8th graders within inner city Youngstown schools. Since 2016, our philosophy has been to teach them skills such as building a computer and programming early on in their education, so that they may develop an interest in these skills long before they cultivate a bias of it being “nerdy” or “weird”. Not only that, but through this program, we are providing them with hands-on computer education that they otherwise might not have access to at home; using a computer that they get to bring home at the end of it!
What Do They Learn?
In this six-week program, they go from learning binary one week to building a computer the next. Following this is learning about the Internet and how computer networking works. Near the end, there is an introduction to programming in Python – where they write a script that will automatically build a castle in Minecraft!
Pictured: Asia J. – A College-Bound “Raspberry Pi Alumni”
Working with YCS
We’re always excited to have the opportunity to run – we’ve done it in the past many times with Youngstown Community Schools but this time we’re teaching a whole 20 5th graders the wonders of computer science! With our biggest class yet, we’re motivated to demonstrate the marvels of digital skills – and by getting them involved in STEM early we hope that thanks to these skills they will find greater successes – much like some of our “alumni” already have! (see above)
