Five years ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation recognised a need for free, high-quality CPD for educators. In response, we started running Picademy, a two-day training event that provides educators all over the UK and North America with the knowledge and skills they need to teach computing with confidence, creativity, and excitement.

We are delighted to now bring you a new free training programme called Picademy Bytes for teachers in the UK who are unable to attend the two-day Picademy events. Picademy Bytes training sessions are 60- to 90-minute community-led events taking place at various UK locations, led by Community Trainers who we ourselves have inducted.

The aim of Picademy Bytes is to highlight the value of delivering curriculum objectives through physical computing activities: the programme provides teachers with the opportunity to experiment with physical computing in a short, face-to-face training session. Teachers can then take what they’ve learned back to their schools, to use or adapt for their own Computing lessons.

Introducing our Community Trainers

In June this year, we invited our first four Community Trainers to attend an induction session, where we introduced them to the resources for their Picademy Bytes sessions, and they gave us feedback on our plans and the session content.

All four Community Trainers are teachers and Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, having attended Picademy in the past. They volunteered to become Community Trainers because they are enthusiastic to help other teachers in their local areas to deliver exciting learning experiences for their students.

The first Picademy Bytes session took place in July at the Computer Science in Schools Conference 2019 at Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent, and most attendees were secondary school teachers. Attendees described the session as “well-balanced [between] theory and practical” and said that it was “very informative and provided ideas for the classroom”.

Look out for Picademy Bytes sessions in a city near you!

Upcoming Picademy Bytes sessions will soon be listed on the Computing at School website and on the Raspberry Pi Foundation website. If you are based in or near Belfast, Bradford, South Wales, Hull, London, North Devon, or Plymouth, look out for events near you from this month! And there will be plenty more events in locations across the UK after that. We look forward to seeing you there!