We all have used computers usually starting from a pretty young age. Most of us now just go straight for the games or the Internet, but wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, kids with access to computers especially in the “text only” computer days had the opportunity to play around with programming. Kids did what kids should do: experiment.
Experimentation with computers was common several years ago; however, as time went on, the drive to do so died with the growing barrier to getting started that wasn’t there originally. The shortening of kids learning has damaged enrollment in computer science fields at colleges and hurt the industry intake of new engineers. With less students feeding in, the field of computer science is dominated by the older generation making it a field with a limited lifespan.
Raspberry Pi set out to try and fix the lack of interest to learn more about computers. They wanted to create a computer with education in mind. It was designed to be small, cheap, and easy to start playing around on.
Raspberry Pi is down to the size of a about a credit card making it easy to transport. The model A is $25, and the model B is $35 that definitely accomplishes the cheap part. (Neither model comes with a monitor, keyboard, or mouse.) An online community is currently developing the educational lesson plans so that a full set of guided tutorials will make getting started even easier. Another hope for the Raspberry Pi is that eventually educational institutions will integrate them in to the student’s normal studies.
“The comparison of this to the family PC is the comparison between the child’s bike and the family car,” said Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi at a TEDx Talk in Cambridge just this year. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xFzVuxldqs] “The child can mess around with it, can break it, if they do it is not a disaster,“ He goes on to talk about how the Raspberry Pi really has a chance at renewing the spirit of experimentation with computers in many kids who would have normally never had a chance to try it.
The Raspberry Pi has just been gaining real momentum in this last year. It really is expected to grow as the demand continues to rise.  They are currently aiming to partner with more educational charities in order to get them in to schools and kids’ home.

 
Anyone can order one online opening everyone the opportunity to l  The first batch of Raspberry Pi’s has just been released, and they are being shipped around the world. You can only pre-order them at one of their distributors, Premier Farnell or RS Components. With any luck, you could get one as early as July this year.
Read more about it at Raspberry Pi’s official site: http://www.raspberrypi.org/
By John Gillis
(All images used under Fair Use Doctrine)