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Google donates 15,000 Raspberry Pis to UK schools

Pi Foundation says gift will help to bake future boffins

Google has donated of 15,000 Raspberry Pi Model Bs to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

At list price of £25.92, that’s a £ 388,800 gift and one that the Foundation says, in a blog post, represents a “… really good sign … that industry has a visible commitment now to trying to solve the problem of CS education in the UK.”

“Grants like this show us that companies like Google aren’t prepared to wait for government or someone else to fix the problems we’re all discussing, but want to help tackle them themselves,” the post continues. "We’re incredibly grateful for their help in something that we, like them, think is of vital importance. We think they deserve an enormous amount of credit for helping some of our future engineers and scientists find a way to a career they’re going to love.”

The donation was made by Google Executive Chair Eric Schmidt (last sighted in North Korea), who spent part of yesterday teaching Cambridge kids how to wield a Pi.

The gift has also enabled the Foundation to hire Clive Beale as its new director of educational development. One of the tasks facing Beale is figuring out who is worthy of one of the newly-donated Pis. The Foundation says the groups CoderDojo, Code Club, Computing at Schools, Generating Genius, Teach First and Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examinations will help determine which kids are most deserving of the computers. ®

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