Raspberry Pi wants to get more students interested in coding by granting them access to manipulate and customise the internal workings of the company's Pi-top, a laptop powered by the now iconic micro computer.
With a sliding keyboard that exposes a tray underneath which houses a variety of different parts such as the Raspberry Pi, a cooling device, and a modular track into which other add ons can be plugged in, the new Pi-top laptop hopes to educate students about computing in a interesting, entertaining, and inspiring way.
"When you go into an English literature class they give you Shakespeare. When you go into a history class, you get the top-40 hits of everything that's happened over the last thousand years, it's incredibly interesting. Then you go into computer science, and if you're lucky you'll change some colors on a screen using Javascript, or you'll print Hello world' and frankly it's not up to par with the other subjects." says Pi-top CEO Jesse Lozano as reported by TechRadar.
This new laptop wants to do more than just show students technological skills. Its purpose is to show them why they might want and need these skills.
Also included with the Pi-top is an Inventor's Kit which contains an add-on board, LED lights, motion sensors, and a microphone which can be added to the tray beneath the keyboard. The kit also includes different coding activities like Smart Robot, Music Maker, and Space Race, which are designed to help learn about and use code simultaneously.
"You can watch someone swimming on YouTube all you want, if you jump into a lake, you won't know how to swim." Lozano said.
The Pi-top is currently available and costs $284.99 (around 214) without the Pi and $319 (239) with the Pi included.
