On 29 February 2012, a UK charity called the Raspberry Pi Foundation began selling a bare circuit board, about the size of a bank card, for US$35. It had a processor, memory, USB ports and an HDMI socket. Plug in a screen, a keyboard and a power supply and you had a real computer, at a price that a school or a family could manage.
The idea was simple. Many young people had stopped tinkering with computers because the devices they owned were sealed boxes that were hard to open, break and learn from. A cheap, hackable board brought that curiosity back.
Why it mattered
- Low cost. Tens of millions of boards have been sold since launch, and many ended up in schools, clubs and homes that could not have bought a full computer for experiments.
- Real tools. The Pi runs Linux and supports Python, Scratch and many other languages, so learners use the same tools professionals use.
- Physical computing. Its row of pins connects to lights, sensors and motors, so a program can switch on an LED or read the temperature. This is where coding meets robotics.
What we take from it
At Techbase we teach with the equipment schools already have, usually laptops. The lesson of the Raspberry Pi is the same: access matters more than expensive hardware. A child who can try an idea, break it and fix it is learning, whatever the device.
If you would like your child or school to try this, talk to us or start with the free lessons on the Techbase Academy.