Founder denies Raspberry Pi's are "gathering dust" in schools

Raspberry Pi founder, Eben Upton, has dismissed a claim that the barebones computers are "gathering dust" in schools.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation partnered with Google early last year in a US$1 million (A$1.1 million) scheme to hand the devices out to schools for free.

That programme was criticised last week by British startup Kano, which sells its own Raspberry Pi kits and peripherals. The firm's head of software, Alejandro Simon, claimed that devices handed out for the programme were lying unused in schools, because teachers found the kits too daunting.

Upton dismissed the comments, saying he was "happy" with uptake of the Raspberry Pi in schools. He said the foundation had handed out more than 8,000 free units to schools so far, out of approximately 16,000 made available for the programme.

"The wonderful thing about [Kano's] claim is that it’s unfalsifiable," Upton told PC Pro. "Out of 8,000, I absolutely cannot guarantee to you that there is not one somewhere that is gathering dust on a shelf."

A tiny minority

However, Upton said the foundation kept a close eye on whether units handed out through the programme actually make it into children's hands.

"We do have good tracking on the vast majority of those," he said. "The reason why I’m absolutely certain that, if there are some [kits] languishing on shelves they’re in a tiny minority, is because we’re required by Google to have very good visibility."

He said the foundation works with six partner organisations - CoderDojo, Code Club, Computing at Schools, Generating Genius, Teach First and OCR - which distribute the devices to schools and report back.

"We require them to report to us, as a condition of receiving more Raspberry Pis," he said. "They have to give us statistics about where those devices have gone. The aim is to get them into the ownership of children: these are supposed to end up in bedrooms, that’s what Raspberry Pi is for."

For example, one partner handed out more than 1,000 Raspberry Pis across 500 after-school clubs. It was then given a second batch at the end of 2013.

"Before releasing this second batch we worked with the partner to verify that a sample of these clubs were actively using the devices from the first batch," he said.

The foundation's educational director, Clive Beale, added that almost 700 schools and 500 computer clubs had "actively used" Raspberry Pis since the start of the school year in September. He predicted another 8,000 Raspberry Pis would be handed out to schools within the next three months.

In an updated statement, Kano said the Raspberry Pi was a "great tool".

"We don’t think Raspberry Pi is gathering dust in general, just that particular 'kit' and documentation wasn't used as it was supposed to," the company said.

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk