New Toy–Raspberry Pi

It is hard to resist a new technology toy. I’ve been hearing about the Raspberry Pi computer for some time now. A couple of weeks ago I talked to a teacher friend  who was using some to help teach computing and computer science concepts. It is an attractive idea. A very small computer yet still reasonably powerful. It doesn’t appear to run Windows (though I haven’t done an serious research on that) but does a lot with Linux. So I bought one.

I still have to get some software for it but it is pretty cool to have a computer that fits in my pocket. I’m not sure what all I’ll do with it. In the long run it depends in part on what I am doing for work after this semester. For starters though I’m going to be playing with Linux and some open source software. I need to see where Linux has come in recent years. Plus there may be some applications for this as part of some hardware projects. Smart robots anyone?

I’m also starting to look around at what others are doing with these devices in education. I’m trying to be as open minded about these sorts of things as possible. So let me know if you are or know someone doing cool things with these devices.