Raspi Contest To Get The Kids Programming

The Raspberry Pi was originally conceived as an educational platform. Much like the BBC Micros and Apple ][s of yore, the Raspi is designed to get kids into programming by giving them a very tiny but still useful computer. Truth be told, we haven’t seen any educational hacks involving the Raspberry Pi, most likely because makers and tinkerers like us have been buying up all the available boards. The Raspi team is trying to correct this problem by holding a summer programming contest aimed at kids under 18 years of age.

The rules are simple: there are two age brackets, under 13, and ages 14-18. The kid who writes the best piece of software for the Raspberry Pi gets $1000, with five $200 runners-up in each category.The contest will run for eight weeks, timed perfectly to coincide with summer vacation.

There will be a few more weekly contests the Raspi team will be holding in the future, but with eight weeks to complete a project we can’t wait to see all the neat stuff kids are going to make.

 

11 thoughts on “Raspi Contest To Get The Kids Programming

    1. In that the Raspi uses the Linux OS would it be necessary to have the actual Raspi in had to create applications for it?Evidently not; “If you don’t own a Raspberry Pi, don’t panic: you can still enter. Use QEMU to emulate the Raspberry Pi in Windows”. My guess the kids that would enter the contest have a computer they could use to create applications

    2. The problem is that you could not use any gpio pins if you have no pi…
      But i really like the idea of that contest to get children into programming.
      The pi is awesome for learning programming but it is also a nice little homeserver and media-center and could be an alternative for expensive media-player solutions.

      Too good that i am one of the lucky ones who have a raspberry pi and i am also under 18 (17 :P).

    1. “Entrants should be aware that we will be expecting to be able to talk (via Skype or in person, via some of the Raspberry Pi volunteers and friends we have around the world) to people who are identifiably children about the code they’ve written!”

  1. I’d love to learn to code on smaller hardware devices such as the RasPi, but the reality is that I’m 18 and broke as hell. Also, the most complex thing I’ve touched is plua (lua on the palm platform) as well as a tiny bit of linoleum. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the barrier of entry is high and none of these events are aimed at making it lower.

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