RASPBERRT PI. Faithful to its vocation to democratize computing, the Raspberry Pi foundation has just presented Code Club World, an online platform allowing children to learn to code for free in a simple and fun way.
Electronic hackers know Raspberry Pi for its miniature boards that allow you to assemble a nano-computer kit at a lower cost. They also know that the famous Pi B, Pi 3, Pi 4 and others are developed by the Raspberry Pi foundation, a non-profit organization originally created by professors in the Computer Science Department at Cambridge University to facilitate and promote learning to program. And if she continues to design and market low-cost Lilliputian circuits that delight a large community of DIY enthusiasts – as evidenced by the multitude of original devices built from these mini-cards – she does not forget. not for all that its primary vocation, namely, the democratization of programming. And it is exactly for this purpose that she announced in a statement, on November 9, the launch of the Club World Code, an online platform allowing children – more precisely, pre-adolescents aged 9 to 13 – to learn coding for free in a simple and fun way.
No formal and boring lesson in Code Club World: here, everything has been designed so that young people learn while having fun, focusing on both their curiosity and their autonomy. The apprentices start by creating their personalized robot avatar and making music to teach it how to dance. The discovery of programming languages and structures is carried out in stages on virtual islands, with block and text manipulations in Scratch and Python, through various activities, and rewarded by a system of badges. A resolutely playful approach, which relies on children’s favorite areas of action, reminiscent of video games and promoting exchanges within a community. Developed jointly with parents during confinements in 2020, this platform is part of the research program Digital Making Framework which aims to make programming learning accessible to all.
Certainly, as the Raspberry Pi foundation specifies, Club World Code is still in beta and only in English. But it is open to everyone, and feedback from parents and young people is welcome to help the platform evolve. Let us therefore salute as it should be this magnificent initiative which could well serve to train a new generation of developers and which proves that the digital world is not entirely guided by the speeches and the mercantile practices of the Gafa.