RaspberryPiBoard/EducationalLinks

This is a set of useful links to educational software/programming languages suitable for the RaspberryPiBoard. Originally from this thread on the Raspberry Pi forums.

Programming languages

• http://scratch.mit.edu/ - Graphical OO-based visual programming environment.
• http://www.alice.org/ - Similar to scratch AFAICT
• http://python.org/ - The original 'designed for teaching' language of the 90s
• http://lua.org/ - Small, extensible and fits in your head
• BBC BASIC - The original 'designed for teaching' language of the 80s - A large number of implementations are listed here: http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic.html
• http://basic256.org/index_en - Another BASIC variant with integrated IDE and simple graphics.
• C/C++ via GCC + CMake build system for advanced use.

Communities

• http://madlab.org.uk/about/ - The Manchester Digital Laboratory

Software suites

• http://gcompris.net/-en- - GCompris is a high quality educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Confirmed working on alpha boards
• http://www.sugarlabs.org/ - The Sugar Sweet, a desktop environment used on the XO one laptop per child

Libraries/applications

• http://www.pygame.org/ - Simple SDL wrapper for Python.
• http://docs.python.org/library/idle.html - The Python IDE that comes with Python.
• http://love2d.org/ - Something akin to pygame for Lua.
• https://github.com/ntoll/RaspberryPy - An interactive set of programming lessons for Python, written in Python. To be built at PyconUK (http://pyconuk.org) during the sprints. :-)
• http://www.khronos.org/openvg/ - OpenVG vector graphics library. Natively supported by GPU(?)

General resources

• http://www.cs4fn.org/ - Computer Science for fun
• http://computingatschool.org.uk/ - Computing at School Working Group
• http://en.literateprograms.org/LiteratePrograms:Welcome - An MIT project to develop programs which are self describing.

Articles/opinion pieces/trade bodies relating to education in the UK

• http://royalsociety.org/education/policy/computing-in-schools/ - The Royal Society's Computing in Schools project
• http://www.edutopia.org/programming-the-new-literacy - Programming is the new literacy
• http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/three-things-we-have-to-teach-in-schools - Ben Goldacre's list of "Three things we have to teach in schools"
• http://securiously.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/do-we-really-need-to-teach-our-kids-to-code/ - Teaching the skills associated with programming rather than programming as an aim in itself.
• http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/teach-our-kids-to-code.html
• http://www.osnews.com/story/6282 - An article on the command-line as a good interface for new users.

Direct action

• http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/15081 - A petition to the Department for Education about teaching programming in schools (UK only).