Announcing our million-pound education charity fund
It’s been a busy month for us here at Pi towers, and after the recent announcement of Picademy and the launch of the new website with an increased focus on educational resources, you may be wondering what’s next for our educational mission.
Without disappearing too far down the rabbit-hole of superlatives, I can say we are all super-excited to announce the launch of the Raspberry Pi Foundation Education Fund. Thanks to the support of the community over the past two years through buying Raspberry Pis and building inspiring, innovative projects, we’ve been able to build up a bag of funds to spend on our education mission. So today we are announcing a £1 million education fund.
Emma has been busy getting artistic with the folding stuff this morning.
This fund is in support of our core charitable mission, so we are looking to fund innovative and exciting projects that enhance understanding of and education in computing for children aged between 5 and 18. The fund does not exclusively target Computing as a subject; we are also interested in supporting projects that demonstrate and promote the use of computing technology in other subjects, particularly STEM and the creative arts.
Our aim is to support a range of projects: from those that increase participation, to those that target excellence. Given our charitable status, priority will be given to organisations that have a not-for-profit ethos. The fund will operate through match funding, so not only are we wanting to hear from people with potential projects ideas; we are also wanting to hear from industry and third-sector partners who’d be interested in co-funding some of the projects.
If you’d like to know more about the fund, how it will operate and how to make an application, you can find out more on our Education Fund page.
29 comments
Ken MacIver
Well “The little computer that could” Did it again,
Congratulations Gals\Guys a.n.others
An overnight success; in a just a few years damn hard work.
Michael Horne
Brilliant news – should really start some great STEM projects off!
Matthew Bracey
I have to say as someone doing programming in computing at the moment I am really happy to hear this news, and I am looking forward to seeing how this will benifit other students like myself :)
Keep up the good work,
Matt
ukscone
well done. your educational goals are all starting to come together.
Matthew
Brilliant! Hope it is spent wisely =D
Alex Eames (RasPi.TV)
Wonderful idea. Bravo!
This has been quite a week. I wonder what tomorrow’s news will be?
Raspberry Pi Staff Gordon
Sorry you’re going to have to wait an entire working day for the next announcement!
Aaron
MagPi issue 22 ;-)
AndrewS
Wow! Gonna be fascinating to see what this ends up funding.
Roger
Well done, I keep buying PIs to help the fund :)
Small point: Is messing with “Coin of the Realm” still a treasonable offence? If so, Emma may lose her head!
Patsy
It’s not an offense. I say this because a penny-mashing machine at Spinaker tower in Portsmouth told me so – there was a label that said “NOTE – THIS IS NOT ILLEGAL”, which is always a fun sign to see!
Apparently the law was repealed pretty soon after it was introduced (and if memory serves it was introduced over 100 years ago).
Patsy
I should clarify – the label did then go on to say more about the law and that it was repealed, it wasn’t just that one sentence :-)
Matt Hawkins
Great news! As far as the currency based case goes, I only ever make them out of fifties. Most shops won’t take them so it’s a good way to get rid of them.
The Raspberry Pi Guy
Awesome!
Been a busy week for you guys them?!
The Raspberry Pi Guy
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Just a bit!
Stick
For the foundation to be able to pump that kind of money back into education is just an amazing achievement.
Robert M
Do you people ever sleep? One milestone after the other conquered – Like a Boss.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Only our office does not have a Deborah.
Jim Manley
C’est Fantastique!!! Magnifico!!! Bravo Zulu, Mates!!! I am hereby proposing a Pi-powered sandwich … with at-cost wheels!!! : D
Amy
Wow! That’s great news! Looking forward to the Picacademy! x
Jim
Awesome!!
Dawn Hewitson
This is fantastic news, really exciting development and will lead to more exciting projects.
Andrew Oakley
Do we have an idea of what kind of balance there should be between STEM on the one hand, and creative arts on the other? I’m rather hoping that STEM will be the priority.
Creative arts seems to work well as a skillset for people who already have a good network of contacts and an middle-to-wealthy academic family background, but in terms of making a real difference to those from poorer non-academic backgrounds, it is STEM that really makes achievements happen. Generalisations I know, and there are exceptions to the rule, but that is the trend.
I just worry that those working the media try to skew everything towards the creative arts, because that is the background of most journalists. Of course we techies can all snigger because we know “creative” types go in to journalism because they can’t make ends meet being artists or novelists, but children at school don’t know that.
STEM is where the focus needs to be. The creative arts can cadge a free ride, but please let’s not spend money on stuff that rich middle-class families are perfectly capable of paying for anyway.
Oh, this is going to be a total flamefest. Cue dozens of wealthy “arts” types telling me how important they are. Shall I hit the “Post Comment” button or just close this tab? Hmm. Coin toss…
Brendan Lawlor
First of all it’s not productive to pit STEM against Creative Arts like that. It is not a simple dichotomy. It’s about interdisciplinary learning, so why don’t we just include Art and make it STEAM?
see http://stemtosteam.org/
Take for example Frank Lloyd Wright. Is he an architect or an artist? I really recommend reading his article “The Art and Craft of the Machine” from 1901.
http://www.learn.columbia.edu/courses/arch20/pdf/art_hum_reading_50.pdf
“We must look to the artist brain, of all brains, to grasp the significance to society of this thing we call the Machine.”
That being said the most offensive aspect of your rant would be how you make it a class issue. People who are successful follow their passions, no matter what background they come from. You came across as judgmental at times and bitter.
If you are not sure whether or not to post something you are probably just venting for your own benefit, rather than joining the conversation.
James Hughes
Hmm, took longer that OP expected for the flamefest to start. If one post is a flamefest…!
Tim Richardson
I’ve been looking forward to the education site since I first heard about it. Well done to all the team.
Alan Heath
There seem to be a few issue when viewing from a mobile phone.
1. The website is not adaptive. So it is more or less impossible to view from a web browser on a mobile phone.
2. I use feedly on my phone to read the RSS feed. The links from the RSS content dont work. It just takes you to the home page rather than a particular blog.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
I’ve said this a few times upstream, but I know people aren’t reading everything: we know it’s not responsive at the moment, but a mobile theme is on the way and should be implemented in the next couple of weeks.
Michael Horton
My school, a high achieving STEM school in California just launched a kickstarter campaign to purchase Raspberry Pi kits to teach computer science to our middle school students and beyond as we expand into high school. One of our students, known as Raspberry Pi Kid online will lead the way and lent her voice to our kickstarter video. Check it out here and consider whether you can support our project:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1208144179/western-center-academys-raspberry-pi-makerspace
Michael Horton