I would like to present a raspberry system at the school of my daughter. The presentation is a part of a code night, which is going to be organised by parents.
During the presentation, I plan to show an installation of a Raspian or an Ubuntu Mate system.
The audience will be mixed: boys and girls at the age between 12 and 17 years.
The presentation is planned for about 90 minutes.
What is your opinion?
What subject should be included in a short presentation, when I have finished the installation and the system is ready to work with?
What subjects should better not be included?
I welcome all your comments, suggestions and questions.
Hagen
I am glad to see that you have selected Ubuntu Mate as it is a very superior choice for the Pi.
Generally, I would cover the use of the Pi as a desktop machine if you are using a Rapsberry Pi 3B+. General text processing, spreadsheets, etc, which Ubuntu Mate for the Pi does very well.
Web browsing should also be covered, but you can run into usability issues with pages that are very heavily graphic oriented. Choose your examples carefully in advance.
Another thing you might show is using the Pi with a purpose specific distro like OpenElec or LibreElec with Kodi. I run a Pi V.2 OpenElec 8.04 media player in my home that reads the video and music files from a Samba repository on my LAN. It works beautifully and would likely be of interest to the children.
I hope that helps. 90 minutes might be a bit long for something like this. You might want to think of it as 45 minutes of presentation and another 45 of Q & A since a lot of questions will likely be raised.
maybe it is a bit too involved (or too graphic heavy as @sfarber5300 mentioned) , but my mind keeps going to something like scratch where the kids could see coding in an animated, interactive way. i first saw it demonstrated in harvard’s edX cs50 course intro to computer science and it helped me get a better visual representation of how pieces of code fit together to form the whole. as a side note: still a little surprised and disappointed that the offline version of scratch is only available for win and osx, but free as free does
Agreed! Scratch, and even Python, are a great way to introduce kids to real computing. If they like games they can learn how to program them. There’s no end to the possibilities of SBCs.
It will take preparation time, but yes, do a raspbian or Ubuntu-mate installation with a short demo of the system running. (another computer system…yawn…)
Since it is a school setting, you can keep it relevant by doing a demo of the Python tutorials and coding environment.
Then swap out SD cards and demonstrate Open Auto, or OSMC, or any of the other Raspberry Pi offerings to demonstrate the flexibility of the system. For OSMC you might want to have another machine staged as your video storage/server using OSMC as the front end.
I agree with this. If the presentation just shows basic OS functionality, the kids will literally fall asleep. The presentation has to demonstrate the cool shit you can do with it, like coding, flexibility, etc. Something that actually gives them a good reason to use this system. Why would they use a Raspi just to do the same they can already do on their computers already, anyway.
There is so much that can be done, and I have very little imagination! Open Auto as an example allows for navigating, voice texting, LEGALLY making and receiving phone calls… that’s just the beginning. Add in a camera hat and you’ve got a dash cam… Can’t find an app that does what you want? Create one. Put the whole system into your pocket and go to a friend’s house to work together on a project.
THXS to everyone of you for comments. That helped me a lot.
Yesterday, I presented the Raspberry Pi with a short LibreOfficeImpress Presentation on my Raspberry Pi (Model 3/Ubuntu Mate) at the beginning. I started with some examples (programming with scratch or snap, python, projects with LEGO and some stratosphere-projects).
After that introduction, the kids installed a raspian on a Raspberry Pi, Model 3 +. Unfortunately, Ubuntu Mate, which is my favorite distro, doesn’t support Model 3+ actually.
At the end, I gave them an overview of the structure of a linux system, let them reboot or halt the system with shutdown and explained, how to flash a micro-sd card with etcher and how to backup the whole card as an image…
They didn’t fall asleep but - at the end - nearly half of the kids played minecraft, tetris-like games or other stuff.
But some of them mentioned that they would like to ask their parents for a raspberry
i was hoping you would pop back in and let us know how it went. teaching is often just about showing kiddos the possibilities. you never know who you might have inspired today. i appreciate that you took the time and gave what sounds like a very interesting demo
you’re welcome… Of course, feedbacks are very necessary to make things better.
By the way, I’ve had my special heavy learning experience yesterday morning, when I tested the raspberry pis from school (the it team invested in 10 Pis, Model 3+).
The Ubuntu Mate installation process didn’t start. I asked myself first, if I made anything wrong, so I flashed the micro sd card for several times.
Then I realised after two hours or so,that it could be a hardware problem , because the school purchased 3+ models and that I should better ask the wise net if others have had similar experiences in the past. My emotional stress level was notable at that time .
My stress problems became bigger and bigger, when I realised step by step, that I have to change my presentation strategy (from Ubuntu Mate to Raspian, replacing some Impress Pages, reflashing the cards (14 pcs.) with raspian, testing etc.
And the end, I finished preparation barely in time , but it took in fact some more power than I have expected before.
At the end everything went fine. But I became really, really tired!
See you - and thank you very much for your postings…
it sounds like you passed the final test and that school should give you another certificate! i haven’t had any experience with single board computers myself. your description was interesting enough that i looked up the 3+ and saw that i has optional Power-over-Ethernet support. i didn’t know such a thing was possible. kinda cool.
do you know what the school intends to do with them? are they just for teaching?
that’s an interesting feature…
It gives us the opportunity to reduce the number of cables… In the basement room, where my servers are located, aren’t enough sockets.
But I’ll wait to upgrade my hardware until ubuntu mate supports the 3+ version…
The teachers plan to use the Raspberry Pis for their computer lessons and study groups: How to set up a server, how to programme and so on… But I’m not really involved, because I’m only a pupil’s father.
I gave the Raspberry speech as a part of a code night, which was organised by the parents’ association.
i think it is amazing to see how far things have come. when i took typing in high school, i just assumed it would be helpful because dad was a computer guy and we had a keyboard that attached to the tv to play some text-based adventure game (the code of hammurabi?) on. a few years later i worked in a daycare that had computers in each of the classrooms and i thought it was cool that the kids would be familiar with them from the time they were very young.
i’m glad to hear your kiddo(s?)'s school (as well as yourself) is involved in giving students a window into that world. obviously it would be great and ideal if every child were able or desirous of going to college, but there is plenty to be gained by studying tech and trade as well
, because the school purchased 3+ models and that I should better ask the wise net if others have had similar experiences in the past. My emotional stress level was notable at that time 
.
, but it took in fact some more power than I have expected before.
But I became really, really tired! 
i haven’t had any experience with single board computers myself. your description was interesting enough that i looked up the 3+ and saw that i has optional Power-over-Ethernet support. i didn’t know such a thing was possible. kinda cool.