Thousands of school children around the U.K. will be receiving their very own Raspberry Pi computers thanks to a new grant from Google.
The Web giant's charitable arm, Google Giving, has awarded a grant to the Raspberry Pi Foundation to provide funding for the donation of 15,000 Raspberry Pi Model B computers to schoolchildren around the U.K. who are interested in computer science. The devices will be handed out with the help of six educational institutions to children "who demonstrate an aptitude and passion for computing," Google said in a blog post.
Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, and Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton traveled to a school in Cambridge today to hand out the first batch of computers and teach a lesson on coding.
"We're absolutely made up over the news; this is a brilliant way for us to find kids all over the country whose aptitude for computing can now be explored properly," the Raspberry Pi Foundation wrote in a separate blog post. "We believe that access to tools is a fundamental necessity in finding out who you are and what you're good at. We want those tools to be within everybody's grasp, right from the start."
The six educational partners that will be handing out Raspberry Pis include: Codeclub, Computing At School, Generating Genius, Coderdojo, Teach First, and OCR. Each device will come with an educational packet created by OCR that was designed to help the children get the most out of their new Pi.
Raspberry Pi is a $35 Linux and ARM-based computer on a small circuit board that aims to promote computer programming for kids. The device, which is about the size of a credit card, plugs into a TV or keyboard, and can be used for word processing, games, and also plays high-definition video.
Late last year the pint-sized PC got its very own app store. Offering a mixture of free and paid apps, the Pi Store featured 23 free titles at launch, ranging from the productivity suite LibreOffice and utility Asterisk to classic games like Freeciv and OpenTTD, as well as the Raspberry Pi exclusive Iridium Rising.
For more, see PCMag's review of the Raspberry Pi and the slideshow above.
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