Kudos to Eric for putting his money where his mouth is after his speech last spring.

Wow that is brilliant!!! Good show Google!! =)
It was Eric I bet…

Wow! This is great! As a (reasonably) young Systems & Control Engineer in the UK, I am really very glad that the momentum is building, everyone needs more Engineers, Computer Scientists etc and it’s great that the Foundation is having such an impact.

Is there Raspberry Pi giveaway in USA?

Are schools elegable for this money, or just students? Our school *want* a class back of raspberry pi’s, but they do not have the funding (and with the IT budget shrinking, probably will never have funding).

Fantastic news! congrats Liz & Eben

I a word “Woot!”.
(Whatever that means, but I beleive it’s traditional!)

Cheers,
Norm.

That’s great news!! Lucky kids indeed, learning to code with Eben & Eric!

Pi seems to be the motto of the day at google:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/01/28/2142244/google-pledges-pi-million-dollars-in-pwnium-3-prizes :D

Congrats, foundation, you deserve it! let’s hope teachers will make the most out of this generous gift of yours and google…

Congrats!

Must be scary to think they are giving away 1.5 times the foundation’s original self-funded budget for boards.

Amazing.

Have you Pi guys (and ladies) thought of doing some kind of ‘Donate-a-Pi’ page where individuals can donate money to a fund which provides Pi’s to schools and other worthy groups/clubs?

absolutely amazing news!

It would be awesome to get these into South African schools. (I’m a South African software developer with 3 Raspberry Pi’s).

This is huge. Congratulations guys. No wonder Eben’s smiling.

Congratulations to the UK students!

ARE YOU READING THIS BILL GATES! If you don’t know what is a RPi, meet me at the next Teach-In event in Orlando, Fl!

[tongue in cheek] Now all they have to do is donate 15000 Gertboards as well.

with luck goolge will port chrome os to the pi

this is great, maybe other schools in other countrys get inspired too by this news, it would be fun if the did it in the netherlands too, since the download page was build with help of a dutch university

Wow, one minute, Eric is touring North Korea, the next he’s donating Raspberry Pi’s. Is there no end to this man?!

What a fantastic piece of news – 15k more potential RISC OS users :-p

Wow, congrats!

Out of interest, is this shipping order going to tie up Farnell and RS for a few weeks?

Incredible. This is wonderful news. Congratulations to Eben, Liz, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and those students who are going to benefit from this.

-Shea

Fantastic news! Be interesting to see the plan for delivery! Google has done good with this!

Brilliant News;

Which by reckoning means you can’t be far of 1million Pi’s Baked and Sold.
You’ve got to pull the nominal 1 millionth one of the line and mount it as a well deserved trophy…

Great News.

I must say there seems to be quite a lot of momentum on this at the moment, I’m a STEM ambassador (http://www.stemnet.org.uk/) and visit schools from time to time to give talks about my subject (Computer Animation / games). Three of my local schools are going to be offering GCSE Computer Science next year and all were loving the Pi when I took it in for open days / talks.

Way to go Google! How great for all those kids! Hope a link goes up for all the cool things they’ll make and do.

Wow! Sounds awesome! Wish you could bring some to our school!
Have a raspberry pi myself, and it is actually the best thing ever! Such a great little machine, and great fun to play with!

-George :D

Wow! Congratulations! Result!

What is the process to apply. I run a Code Club at a primary school and there are a couple of girls who really get it.

Class of 12, 50/50 boys and girls.

I am putting together a remote control car controlled by Scratch at the moment to bring in to show them that Scratch isn’t just about making a cat bounce around the screen.

Arrange a Raspberry Jam and plan to run more.

great news… what would happen if google just put the raspberry pi up on their homepage for say 8 hours!!!

Can home educated kids apply for these?
Not all kids attend school.  :-)
Stuart

Does the UK giveaway cover Northern Ireland schools too? We’re in the UK but often forgotten about and we need future geeks NOW!

Hope so…

In less than 12 months, the Raspberry Pi computer has galvanised a global community together into action with one common goal in mind; to inspire the digital creators of tomorrow. It has become a powerful catalyst, helping advance the activities of all who want to promote the enormous potential of computing in schools and in bringing about a much needed, radical upgrade to our ICT curriculum. This Google initiative will support teachers and children through a range of hands-on workshops and training to make these low cost computers even more accessible to all.

I hope that people will still want to come to , since these create rich opportunities for children, families, teachers and industry all to come together in one space to learn in a totally different way than a classroom provides for.

Great news and well done Google

As a codeclub ” teacher” I am not sure how the RPI fits in. Will this initiative come with other hardware? The most exciting thing the RPI brings are the GPIO pins but I’d like some guidance and support on what to connect and teach. Other than that they are just another computer but with inappropriate video out for the environment (HDMI in schools).

Also it would be great to see more advanced, even professional artwork to go with the CodeClub materials. Or even materials to give directly to teachers so they can deliver something similar to all the kids in their school? What am I saying? I think it is that these groups need and support more than a bulk order of hardware to distribute.

They should give them to Irish schools. Their EU headquarters is in Dublin and Ireland has Coderdojos all over the country so the kids could learn to code for them

nice going getting some RPis to coderdojo, I’ve been to a few of their sessions (as a padawan) and I can honestly say that I’ve learned a fair bit from them!

Great news!

Just not sure how the boards will be distributed as I have not heard of any of the associated organisations operating in Scotland. Main Scottish mechanism would be through Education Scotland.

Is Eben doing his overly attached girlfriend impression?

From The BBC Coverage:

“Schools are increasingly being used as marketing venues by companies promoting their own brands in return for teaching resources, books, sports equipment or computers,” said a National Union of Teachers representative.

Dear NUT Rep,

Microsoft has been marketing to our kids in school for the last fifteen years. My daugher’s homework sheet specfically read “Create a Powerpoint presentation showing…”
In a seperate incident, the computer lab was being rekitted with Apple Macs in the style of an Apple Store. I bet the school didn’t pay full price for them.

So there,

Ian.

Perhaps in the future history will teach that this is the time where it all gained momentum. Well done everybody.

Imagine meeting Eric Schmidt. It would be like…

Me: “Sorry I am late, Eric, I….”
Eric: “… was caught up in traffic on the way here. I know”
Me: “Erm, yeah… normally I’m early riser but I…”
Eric: “… hit the snooze six times. I know”
Me: “Riiight. I was out a bit late last night….”
Eric: “.. because you were trying that new Italian restaurant in the high street. I know.”
Me: “Okay, Eric, you crossed the creepy line for sure.

I challenge Apple to double it for students in the US

Hi,

It is really good to see Google funding the future computer programmers, scientists and engineers, bravo!

We could probably find some funding to buy a large number of Raspberry Pi computers for France. However, without a change in the education system this would be a waste of money. Without the work of CAS et al. in the UK, Google would not be able to be such a blessing.

Regards,

Will

I know were not GOOGLE and are only giving 12 RASPBERRY PI’s away, but at the WEA were going to be getting ADULT LEARNERS excited about COMPUTING again using the RASPBERRY PI – I will be deploying a two day INTRODUCTION workshop in NOTTINGHAM 11th & 25th Feb – 11am-4pm and then the material will be shared within the WEA for potential deployment at other WEA locations.

http://dainproject.com/2013/01/14/happy-2013/

I’m SO impressed with the RASPBERRY PI that I blogged about my first hours usage -> http://infostocksy.wordpress.com/computer-stuff/

Thats Eric Schmidt! That geek is freakin cool, he’s using Google tech to fight Mexico’s drug cartels. A geek persona straight out from a sci-fi hacker movie.

Our son has major problems writing due to his severe seizure disorder..computers are his lifeline for communication. He is about to go away to a school where they can treat his seizures but needs a computer of his own. It would be brilliant if you could help him google ? Please :)

Wow. Congratulations UK students! And this is a cool step, Google. I really *like* this new.

Its good news thay are the more powerfull and useful model B’s! Well done Google and the foundation!

Its great the foundation & its partners are putting governments past & present to shame, three decades on inaction put right in one mighty swoop.

Great effort from Google! That is a huge head start for getting RasPis where they need to be.

Are google now worthy of the “Friends of Pi” section?

I see Eric is wearing normal glasses and not the hi-tec google bluetooth ones….. Is this because PI’s dont have bluetooth…. i wonder?

How would a school go about getting some of these Raspeberry Pi’s from Google?

Well, I suppose this was a lot cheaper than giving away 15,000 Google Nexus tablets or smart phones … :D

It is curious that Google has taken so long to get around to contributing to computing education anywhere, let alone somewhere outside the U.S. Bill Gates has several computer science buildings named after him on campuses like Stanford, and that’s pretty much been his visible contribution to public education in the developed world (his foundation hasn’t had much of an impact in any meaningful way beyond a few poorly self-publicized secondary school pilot projects).

I’m battling the traditional educational IT bureaucracy that has grown up around MS and Apple based systems, and I agree that distribution of Pi hardware alone isn’t going to be enough, especially if it were done through the normal IT channels. However, that’s how the funding troughs are lined up, and knocking over those non-round-bottomed rice bowls is going to take a major effort, especially given the direction that all budgets are heading, not just school IT budgets.

Even with SillyCon Valley’s riches, the local Coder Dojo doesn’t know where its rent money is going to come from in the immediate future. In surrounding agricultural areas (where half of California’s sixth-largest-in-the-world-if-it-were-a-country GDP is generated), there are no resources for anything like coder clubs beyond what little is available in schools (as a place to gather, if nothing else), since the lower economic portion of the population lives in plywood shacks.

In any case, this is a welcome development and we can only hope for and encourage more activity like this everywhere. It needs to be matched with the other requisite hardware (e.g., displays, keyboards, pointing devices, etc.), educational materials, and knowledgeable personnel, though.

Fantastic news for the foundation!!! Thanks Google :-)

WOW! The smiles tell the story. Especially on Eben… what words cannot describe, is conveyed in an instant with that smile! Congratulations!

cool! but how about here in the U.S.? I am starting to think about a “buy-one-donate-one” program for some schools here in the U.S. (specifically here in Minnesota). Something similar to the OLPC program (though the Rpi is gaining popularity much faster than OLPC could ever even imagine).

I have plenty of children at our Y6 Computer Club who would love one, more Scratch.

Well done, Google! I am a teacher at Faculty of Education (University of Vigo, Spain) in ICT and Education. I also work with several schools trying to improve the way teachers are using ICT in a inclusive and collaborative manner. One of my research topics is programming and also robots (Moway) in education (nursery and elementary schools) from an inclusive and participatory perspective, and I am wondering if you would be interested in introducing Raspberry in Spanish schools. Thank you!

Liz, its just not the UK kids, its the world !
Good on you Google cant remember the last time the idiot operating system gave anything to the community for free :-)

Just seen this on the web “A piece of the pi: Google offers $3.14159 in cash rewards to any hacker who can crack its Chrome operating system”….

I wonder if their donation has hit a chord?

How can my pupils apply for one? Please tell me how.

Would be very interested in helping to deploy to adult learners, just released 8 units into the wild after delivering the WEA’S first course to adults about the Raspberry Pi http://www.dainproject. com/raspberry-pi – ubuntu y’all

Great News good old Google