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Kids: we’re giving away 2000 Pi kits for your class, or for your home projects!

Please note this competition is now closed.

You met Lance Howarth, the CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation (this means he heads up our charitable giving), when he joined us earlier in the autumn. Today Lance has some news for you – and a very silly hat.

Lance says:

Ho Ho Ho!

He’s leaving presents under the tree, not stealing them. Honest.

Here at Pi Towers we are getting into the festive spirit, and we’ve been thinking how best to pay back the goodwill our community has shown us over the last year. So, in support of “Hour of Code” as part of Computer Science Education week, we got together with our friends from Google and we are going to give away Pis for Christmas. That’s right: we’re giving away up to 2000 Google Raspberry Pis to anyone under the age of 18 in the United Kingdom. To qualify for a free Pi you need to do one of two things. Either:

Get your school to do an “Hour of Code” between now and the end of term and we’ll send a Pi for every participant to your school (up to a maximum of 20), or
Design a “My Pi Project” poster and send it to us here at Pi Towers, and we’ll send you your own Raspberry Pi.

How do I take part?

You can get more information on Hour of Code week from our friends at Code.org. They have lots of great ideas of what you can do for the Hour Of Code. If you are a member of Code Club, how about getting your class to have a go at their festive project Christmas Capers? To qualify for your Google Pi, just ask your teacher to register here. At the end of next week we’ll take the first thousand Raspberry Pis and start shipping them out on a first come, first served basis, so the Pis should be waiting for you when you come back to school in January.

Not everyone is going to get the opportunity participate in the Hour of Code week, but don’t worry, you can still get a free Google Pi. All you need to do is design a poster showing us what you think would be a cool Raspberry Pi project. This might be something to do with your pet, like an automatic cat flap or feeder; something to do with photography, like looking at the thermal image of your house; or something festive like controlling the Christmas lights so they flash along to music. If fact, anything will do, we are just looking to see how imaginative you can be and to learn what you think would be a cool project. Once you have designed your poster you need to get your parent to print this form out, fill it in, and then send it with your poster to us by post at:

Poster Competition
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Mount Pleasant House
Huntingdon Road
Cambridge
CB3 0RN

You can also send us a scan of your poster and completed form by email at postercompetition@raspberrypi.org.

Your poster needs to be with us by the 8th of January, so you’ll have plenty of time to get this done over the Christmas break. So get thinking!

Please note that we cannot accept entries that do not have parent/guardian contact details and signature.

Who ate all the Pis? Santa, of course!

A couple of notes: this promotion is only open to schools and kids in the UK (this requirement is placed on us by our partners at Google UK). You’ll receive Google Pi kits, which include a cased Model B Raspberry Pi, an SD card, a power supply, a copy of The MagPi, some projects recipe cards and a Getting Started guide. If you are a teacher and you send us a successful application, we will be getting in touch later in 2014 to talk about what you’re doing with the Raspberry Pis.

128 comments

Do we only have to be in the United Kingdom to qualify for the Pi?

You have to be a kid or a teacher in the UK, and you have to submit a poster or, if you’re a teacher, be participating in the Hour of Code with your class.

We’re home educators in the UK. We’re participating in the hour of code, can we enter?

Looking at the numbers, at this point you’ll have a much better shot at a free Pi if you do the poster competition instead.

This is torture! I live in the U.S and I’m not part of a public school! D: P.s It is soooo not your fault I found this site. FYI it was my daddy who gave me this link. D:

What model R-Pi?

Model B. I’ll add that to the post.

What if you are 18? Got an idea for something I could use it for at college.

What a great Christmas gift! I hope you get lots of great entries.

This is age discrimination. When will you be giving free Pi to old farts?

Well I think the idea is that kids don’t have money to buy one of their own, where as an “old fart” should. Not to mention that their goal has been and always will be about education for kids, not the hobbyists.

Starting on my poster now!

Also – can they be done on a computer, I don’t have a scanner. (Or the stamps to post it).

It can, but we do need your parent or guardian’s signature, so you’ll have to work out how to get that to us.

More then one scan? The poster, signed letter from the parent(s), and maybe even a picture of the parent(s) signing the letter.

The wonders of technology.

Too bad I am in Canada :(

Same here, no love for us Canadians :(

FWIW, I love Canadians. I’ve yet to meet a bad one. If I weren’t so spoiled with San Diego, California weather and had a tougher hide for the cold, Id love to live in Canada.

You forgot the best part of canada: strong beer to forget the cold :-)

Such a shame it is not open to the scouting organisation. I run a cub pack (age 8 to 10, boys and girls) with about 20 members who would cry out for a computing related badge built around evenings spent coding and playing with a Raspberry Pi. If you do consider opening it up to this pool of interested individuals please do let me know.

If you know 20 kids who are interested, get them to send us 20 posters – that’s why we’re running two separate promotions here.

Will all 3 of my sons be allowed to enter? or should I say, will they all get one?

They’ll be fine with 1 to share, but just though i’d check.

Thanks for the help and for an amazing offer.

We’ll make a decision on that when we see how many entries we get: there are a finite number of Pis, so siblings in the same household may not get one each if we’re oversubscribed.

Bravo, especially for linking the Hour of Code! Too bad it’s for UK kids only – my students want the address for Pi Towers so they can mail themselves there! :D

BTW, Google Maps shows “Pi Towers” as being at the 1st Histon Scouts, 1 Park Drive, Impington, Cambridge ;) It also suggests the Foundation is at either the University of Cambridge Computer Lab, the permanently-closed Center for Computing History (relocated, but no address), the Cambridge Judge Business School, or the Institute of Astronomy (that explains soooo much – we all suspected you were either aliens or space cadets! :lol: )

Now, off to shame Google here in the U.S. to match their UK office’s largess!

It’s pretty much a mix of all of those.

The Institute of Astronomy is where we hold the justly (in)famous CamJams: all the best in Pi goodness with the occasional overly caffinated presenter.

How about if we are in US, are we qualify for this?

Other comments suggest its for the UK only.

Typo found – sorry :)

To quality for your Google Pi,

Where are the Pi Baubles? :)

You know you’re going to have to do a “Gallery” on YouTube. Complete with the correct music. Showing my age…

Do we have to enclose a stamped addressed envelope, and do we get extra points for use sticky backed plastic and toilet rolls?

Is it possible to program the raspberry pi with Labview?

Arend-Jan
14 jears

Unfortunately LabVIEW will not run on the Pi.
The runtime libraries are specific to Windows, MacOX or a specific distribution of Linux running on the x86 processor.

There has been much talk about a version of LabVIEW on the Pi but so far NI have not committed to anything.

There are a few examples of people using the Raspberry Pi to communicate with LabVIEW running of a different platform such as Low Cost USB DAQ Driver for use with Raspberry Pi®, LabVIEW and Raspberry Pi TCP/IP Communications and Minecraft-Pi API in LabVIEW which you may find interesting.

I’m an ICT Technician at our school which has taken part in the Hour of Code this week – can I submit the application on behalf of our school or does it definitely need to be a teacher?

It’s not teachers as such, anyone responsible for learning. We want to see the Pis to be actively and regularly used by young people – and to get some feedback on what they are doing – so if you’ve done the Hour of Code with kids in your school, drop us a line.

Can i have one please I go to the city of london academy in london?

As I fail all prerequisites (I’m not in the UK, I’m over 18 [i]and[/i] my last day at school is a considerable time ago ;) ) I can only say: well done Google (and the Foundation) and best of luck to all participants! :D

Kits for Kids? It’s a very nice idea and if you are in the UK, U Kould be a part of this…

Greetings from Germany

Greetings from America!

I have German heritage, so Germany holds a special place in my heart. Hope to travel there some day.

Great idea! Am going to use this with my class. How do we show we have done the hour of code to enter the competition?

We plan on just believing you. :D

Thanks! Told the kids about it and we are doing it tomorrow, really looking forward to it. I’ve just taken up the post as ICT Coordinator at a state school in inner London. We haven’t got any of these pis yet but hopefully some free ones might help us get to grips with them…We’ll see!

Though we’d also love to know what you did!

What a great opportunity! (We are in the U.S. so we can’t qualify) but, I’ll just say yhat my 11 year old is so into working on his raspberry pi that he put together this past summer. He has taken a serious interest in programming and is learning both JavaScript and Python.

Kudos to you all for making this available to many more kids! I’ll be looking forward to someone in the U.S offering a neat deal like this!

Are you ever going to do the “Buy one, give one” you talked about earlier?

Possibly – but it’s not near the top of the list at the moment.

I totally want to get a pi and replace the onboard computer on my car and add bluetooth. I’d like to use the existing display and GPS, but figuring out how to interface the touchscreen display and the GPS module to this pi seems really intimidating!

Not that I need a free one to do it. The education I’d need to make the project work is worth a hundred times the cost of a pi.

What’s nice about the Pi and the Pi community is that someone has probably already done what you want. Search through Google or your favorite search engine and see what you find.

I think this is a really nice doing.
Poorly im from Germany and also not a child anymore.
But i hope all those Pi’s will get to good use :)

Thumbs up for this

I’ve added an entry for my level 1 class, however we are a college not a school, so hoping that you will allow that. Colleges are education as well in the UK and have a high number of qualifying students, shame to rule them out really.

As long as they’re under 18, that’s fine.

I home educate my kids (well, son is flexi-schooled) His school were not interested (AAAGGGHHHHH) so we did the hour of code ourselves last night. We are starting the 8 hours next week once my printer arrives. I have sent you his certificate and I put ‘free school’ as a school as there is no home education option. Hope thats OK

Thanks Emma – we’ll make sure we tie this post to your entry.

Thanks guys xx

If we are home educators, and do intend to do hour of code, should we enter that way or get the children to do the posters? (My son has already done the poster actually :) )

Entirely up to you. I expect the poster competition to be less oversubscribed, so you may prefer to do that – plus, we’re actually pretty excited about getting our hands on the posters!

I was down at the post office posting it when you commented :) Is it first come first served on that, or do we have to wait until January to find out if we’re getting one?

I’m afraid it’s January. (Plenty of time to make plans, though!)

I’m in a very similar situation to Emma Salmon, so I’m hoping you’ll show us the same generosity! We’ve just done the Hour of Code this pm, and are looking forward to continuing the course on Friday, I’ve entered us as a ‘free school’ too. I’ll look to share the Pi with other home-educated kids with whom we do regular science and computing sessions. With thanks and best wishes, Pippa

I’m just wondering – do we need to post you our certificates to prove we’ve done the Hour of Code? With thanks, Pippa

No, you don’t; we’ll believe you!

I have made an application based on my students 3hours of coding they will do for their controlled assessment. But further to this, I have just looked at the Christmas capers hour of code and it looks great. I will be running it this week and next with various groups including year 7’s, 8’s and 9’s. They will love it! So can this please be added to our application too??? Might even do some posters too… Very excited!

Just wondering if at 22 i could get away with this ;) lol

Actually, seriously considering taking this to my beavers group though, see if any of them would be interested lol

I run a weekend club for coders. Would we be eligible for this?

We run a home school tech/code club. Hope that counts :)

26 of my students have just completed an hour of code. They have been doing the “Is Eliza Human?” Python activity on grok learning .com website. Is that all they have to do to the Pis?
Secondly, Does the Pi stay with school or do the students own it?
When the students registered for the activity , they were not asked to enter their school’s name. How does Google link teachers to students and schools so that my students can collect their Pis.

You (the teacher) need to fill out the registration form here to apply. We prefer the Pi to be given by the teachers to the students, so they can use them at home as well as at school – we firmly believe it’s the most effective way to learn with one; but that decision is down to the teacher.

Our our children have completed the Hour of code and had great fun. Its great that they are carrying on when they get home.
Really appreciate the opportunity to get some Raspberry pis in the school. Look forward to learning about them

Our 20 level 3 students have been doing a number of events this week for Hour of Code (Pascal, JavaScript, Actionscript, Python). I have registered using the link above but no reply. Is this normal? Plus do you need registers for students or any other details?

Hi Liz,
I’m doing the poster comp. Is the pi going to be here by Christmas and am I guaranteed to get one

No, and no. We’ll be going through the entries in January, at the end of the competition, and if there are more than 1000 entries the best 1000 will receive a Pi.

Hi,

Have you a rough idea when you’ll be replying to the registration process?

I completed the form yesterday and we’ve done two hours of coding so far… my students are already chasing me for details.

I understand that winners won’t be announced until after the Christmas break, I just wanted to confirm that we’re ‘on the list’.

Many thanks
Mr MacPhee

You’ll hear in January. (I’m afraid we’re very busy!)

Many thanks for the reply… is there any additional information you need to support our case?

Regards

Is there anything like this for u.s.a

Hi Liz I sent my poster via email two days ago and I’m not whether you have got it or not. Do you normally reply straight after you got it or after the deadline ???

No, we don’t: you’ll all hear some time after the deadline. (It’ll take us a while to go through them all, and we won’t start until the deadline.)

:-)
Hi Liz
My names Praise Johnson and I sent my poster via email with a scan of the parent consent form. Is that alright ???

Absolutely fine. Thanks!

Can the poster be designed on a computer or does it have to be hand drawn?

Also can it be email instead of posted or does it have to be posted as well as emails (as it says ‘You can also’)?
Thanks

Doesn’t matter what you do it on but make sure you have the parent form with it.

Ok thanks. Just one more question, can there be multiple entries from the same contestant?

Is there anything like this for u.s.a. because I got my poster finished and ready and signature then it said only for UK.

only one entry per person !

Registered for the competition, two classes of 23+ Year 9 pupils have done an hour of code (and will do more this week). Hopefully we’ll be successful in January.

can i submit a poster if live in USA, and get a free Pi?

What if we live in the US but would be willing to pay for shipping?

Hi Liz, I have registered and our code morning is tomorrow. Do I need to do anything else? Should I expect confirmation of registration from you or anything? Thanks, Rich (Year 5 teacher)

You’ll all hear from us later on in January. Thanks!

Hi Liz

I’ve resent my poster again because when I opened it, it looked a bit messed up. I called it My Pi Project (Updated)
Is that alright ????

Hi a few members of my STEM Club have completed an hour of coding for the first time. I have just set up a Coding Club where they can begin to write their own games. 20 Pi’s would be a marvelous gift as some kids are FSM and cannot afford the kits. How do we verify our hour of code? All the best, Happy Christmas! Claire (STEM and Science Teacher)

No verification needed – we’ll take your word for it. But do tell us what you got up to :)

Hello,

great to link to HoC event. Here on my school (High School classes), we study on the Pi on a project based lesson. Too pity it is only for GB. Here in Greece we organized an HoC activity (plugged-unplugged) that you can watch here:

http://youtu.be/qe8f52jd4-4

I think they deserved a Pi taste.

Hello

When does this competition end?
I am involved in launching an unmanned airborne raspberry pi quad helicopter club with a local High school. We are kicking off the project in January. There are 4 STEM ambassadors, 15 high school students and the Computing and DT teachers involved. We have successfully secured funding from local businesses and the IoP to buy a 3D printer, scanner and uav parts. However we can afford to provide a raspberry pi to each of the 15 students involved. It would have been fantastic to have done this. Will there be a repeat of the competition? Or can we use our first 1 hour coding session on 17 January 2014? The session will continue to run weekly on the Friday with the students having an additional one hour slot on the Wednesday to work on the project.
Thanks
Adam

Raspberry Pis are just awesome

My son has only just spotted this. If he does a poster are there still pis left to give out?
Cheers

Yes – please send in the poster by 8th January!

That’s great thanks. I emailed the poster in last night. I got an auto reply from Clive which said he would be deleting his emails and I needed to resend the email after midday on the 6th?
I assume that doesn’t apply to the competition emails?
Cheers

Of course not! I have them all safe and sound :) Thanks to everyone for their entries, they’re fantastic. We’ll announce results etc some time after 8th Jan.

Excellent, thank you.
My son is very excited about the possibility of building a raspberry pi robot!
He is now working his way through Codecademy python tutorials :)

ps:
thanks for being awesome raspi

I have a couple of pi’s at school one I would like to make into a wall display connected to a tv in my room. The competition says recipe cards do these have tasks kids can do at home then bring in and demonstrate? Also if we don’t win any and I have to fundraise can we download the cards?

I have found some good resources at http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/by-subject/computing/raspberry-pi/

hi if i post it tomorrow and if it comes is late will it be accepted

As long as it’s postmarked 7th and is sent 1st class then yes. It would be easier to scan / take photo and email it and the entry form though.

Hi there, I sent mine in by email today. Thanks.

Sent it! I’ve come up with an idea which I really like (A Dropbox Photo frame in a mirror, which has a mirror film on in), which I really can’t wait to build if I manage to get one! (hope I’m not too late!) :D

I’ve only just come across this! Too late!
Will you be running anything similar in the future?

Possibly (we’ve been overwhelmed with entries, and Clive and Lance are just meeting to discuss how to make as many people happy as we can – we’ve had a simply enormous number of schools apply). Watch this space!

Do you have a timescale for sending the Pi’s for the lucky schools who entered through the Hour of Code method? Thanks :)

We’ll start sending them out at the end of the month or at the start of Feb.

We’ve only recently seen this and my son is working on his entry now so I can hopefully scan and email it later.
Is the deadline midnight today?

I have entered the Poster Competition. How will we be notified to say whether our poster has been selected?

I Just sent mine in is it still valid? Is the deadline midnight???

My son’s school (St Bartholemews, Westhoughton) registered for this on Tuesday Jan 7th but has not heard back. He was really excited about this over the school hols and couldn’t wait to get back to school to tell his teacher about it. Now he’s very upset because he thinks the wrong email address has been given! Hope someone can let him know if the entry has been accepted, thanks.

Liz, hope you don’t mind me asking but have you started giving the pi’s out yet?

When will we find out if we have won?

Shortly! Please be patient, we had hundreds of entries and it takes time to process and judge them.

Thanks Clive I was waiting to see if I had won!

Goodluck!
By the looks of things there are a lot of entries! :P Good luck everyone :D

when will find out if our child has won

Any progress on results yet?

Everyone who entered got one.. and they gave out 5000 pis instead of 2000

Hello, I sent a poster in before Christmas and still haven’t received a raspberry pi. I don’t know if this is due to them not being sent yet but if everyone got one I want to know where mine is.

Hi, there was a delay in getting them shipped out due to the extended number we gave out. They’ll be sent out soon.

I only just found out about this, is it too late?

Sorry, yes, it’s too late now.

Hi,

I am a volunteer on the board of a not-for-profit community library based in Manchester. As a new venue, we’re bring CoderDojo and CodeClub to our library.

We did a coding taster session on Tuesday to assess interest and were packed out. We also ran our first CodeClub today. Given that we’ve had our coding sessions this week and it appears we’re too late for this particular chance, could you help with two questions:

1. Would we qualify as a community library (soon to finish our charity registration)? We are a registered public CodeClub venue.

2. Any idea when/where the next such chance might be? Not necessarily from yourselves, just wondering if you had partners that it may be useful for us to contact.

Feel free to reply by e-mail if you need proof :)

Thanks in advance

Hi there, this area of the site isn’t actively monitored – you woudl be better sending an email enquiry to info@raspberrypi.org

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