“The only thing the children have been talking about since they got their hands on building them!” So says Kevin Chung, IT & Technical Services Manager at Prospect House Schools in London. Prospect House is part of House Schools Group, an umbrella organisation for three schools in West London: Bassett House School, Orchard House School and Prospect House School. The schools are non-selective, co-educational preparatory schools for children aged 3–11 years. They joined the pi-top community when each school purchased a dozen pi-tops for its pupils.
About House Schools Group
House Schools Group is accustomed to being ahead of the curve in terms of technology integration. The group aims to provide supportive, yet challenging teaching, which takes into account the progress and individual needs of children.
They were looking for a product that enables students to develop their creativity and helps them become learners who value learning with, and from, others and who develop a positive attitude to learning.
The schools offer a broad-based curriculum, including extracurricular activities, in order to facilitate the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills so pi-top was an obvious choice to fill the demands of the computing curriculum and the growing number of code clubs.
How have the students responded to the pi-tops?
“The schools’ onboarding process was smooth and everyone enjoyed using the pi-tops from the start. As Kevin says, “When the pi-tops arrived, both the teachers and children were very excited to see the clever packaging and couldn’t wait to build them. The step-by-step instructions were easy to follow and kids were totally engrossed in building them – and so were the big kids – the teachers! The notion that the children can say they’ve built their own laptop computer is what makes pi-top so special and pi-top seems to be the only thing the children have been talking about since they got their hands on building them.”
pi-tops support all abilities
Students of all abilities have responded well to using pi-tops. Kevin says that the pupils “are no strangers to coding and robotics as they have been using Raspberry Pis as part of the computing curriculum and code clubs, but the pi-tops added another dimension of excitement to the curriculum”.
The pi-tops have also allowed them to get hands-on experience prototyping electronics and making their own physical computing projects using the pi-topPROTO boards.
Play and learn
As well as the usual Raspberry Pi software, the pi-top came bundled with CEEDuniverse, a revolutionary educational game developed by the pi-top engineering team where students learn basic computational thinking skills by solving fun, challenging puzzles. The game is described by Kevin as a “very cleverly designed game that teaches coding to children in a form of an adventure game with elements of the science curriculum thrown in!”.
Staying in touch
The team has been in constant touch with House School Group, to make sure that the schools and the students were adapting well to the new equipment. In the words of Kevin, “From the initial contact, the staff at pi-top have been super-friendly and approachable. They seem genuinely interested in how the children are getting on with the pi-tops and there is a constant feedback loop, which we know is going to help them develop more.”
Overall, the group is very pleased with their pi-tops as they fulfil the needs of the computing curriculum and engage in their code clubs. Pi-top also make an excellent choice for after-school clubs across a number of different disciplines.
For more, visit: pi-top.com
