| Raspberry Pi Courses Move To edX Platform |
| Written by Sue Gee |
| Friday, 23 June 2023 |
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that it has become a partner of edX in order to bring its courses targeted at teachers and educators to a larger audience around the world. According to Ben Hall, Learning Manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, over a quarter of a million people have taken the free online courses formulated by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Commenting on the commitment to support educators teach computing, Hall explains: Supporting teachers and educators is crucial for our mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Through our online courses educators can learn the skills, knowledge, and confidence to teach computing in an engaging way. As a result, they empower young people to in turn develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to use digital technologies effectively, and to be able to critically evaluate these technologies and confidently engage with technological change. The move to edx applies to twenty courses, ten of which start on August 1, the rest on September 5, and you can find details of and join any of them by going to the Raspberry Pi Foundation's page on edX:
Disclosure: When you make a purchase having followed a link to a course provider from this article, we may earn an affiliate commission. Some of courses that are now on edX were formerly on FutureLearn, and they are still there to cater for people who had enrolled on them on that platform. Newcomers, however, need to head to edX to "old" favourites such as Introduction to Scratch Programming, which I reported on last year. Two exceptions to this rule are that Prepare to Run a Code Club and Start a CoderDojo Club are on FutureLearn and are not on edX.
Among the first batch of courses is Introduction to Machine Learning and AI. This is a 4-week course requiring 2 - 4 hours per week, and is self-paced which gives you great flexibility which is intended to let teachers increase their knowledge and confidence in delivering lessons about artificial intelligence and machine learning. It looks at the kinds of problems you can apply machine learning to, discusses how AI is impacting the world, and considers the ethics of collecting data to train a machine learning model. One access point to this course is from the Experience AI website. A collaboration between Google DeepMind and the Raspberry Pi Foundation Experience AI is a newly launched educational program that offers resources on artificial intelligence and machine learning for teachers and their students, including a free set of lesson plans to help teachers introduce AI and machine learning (ML) to students aged 11 to 14.
Another courses that will available in August is Teaching Programming To 5- to11-year-olds. It is intended for Primary School teachers preparing to start including Computer Science in lessons and according to its blurb: During this course, you'll learn about the key programming concepts of algorithms, sequence, repetition, selection, and variables. You'll experience a number of different programming languages suitable for young people, and use your new knowledge to modify and create programs in the block-based language Scratch.
For teachers, and others, wanting to discover basic programming concepts and create a first program in Python, Programming 101: An Introduction to Python for Educators, is another 4 week course that is free on edX, and like the other courses, has a optional upgrade. Upgrading to the Verified Track, at a cost of $49, gives access to graded assignments as well as to the course videos and other materials and a shareable certificate on successful completion. Perhaps the most important reason for upgrading is that while access to the course lasts only 4 weeks on the Audit Track it is unlimited once you upgrade.
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 23 June 2023 ) |
