P.U.C. Introduces the Raspberry Pi

John Avery

In 2014, the Public Utilities Commission launched its Young Innovators Programme by giving students the tools to create mobile apps, and this year it’s all about the raspberry pi.  It sounds like a dessert, but it’s actually a credit-card sized computer platform created by Cambridge professors in 2008. The PUC intends to hand over five computers to forty-seven secondary schools with active IT programs, and the objective is to encourage the greater use of computers – not at the level of users, but as a platform that students can build on to come up with innovative solutions to challenges. Today, the PUC held a soft launch of the raspberry pi program.

John Avery, Chairman, Public Utilities Commission

“We’ve chosen the raspberry pi…it’s a small computer platform, very affordable, and we’ve chosen that as a teaching tool for teachers and for students at the high school level for this program to incorporate into their ICT curriculum in the high schools so that students become more familiar with the computer as a building block as opposed to just a tool to be used to solve problems involving data and that sort of thing or simply as a tool for accessing information on the internet. We want to encourage people to use computers to actually build new devices, new systems, new platforms.”

Dalwin Lewis

Dalwin Lewis, Consultant

“The raspberry platform allows young minds to actually interact with a computer – not only to program it but to actually do things like add sensors to it…allow them to get the temperature of a room, add a sensor whereby if you’re walking it can detect motion, or it can say something, or do something. So this platform allows young minds to explore like the way it used to be, and that is something Belize really needs, for the young minds to explore, to become curious.”

Roosevelt Blades

Roosevelt Blades, Consultant

“This is the start of a great initiative in our country. We hope to see more computer engineers, programmers, network administrators…as there is always a demand for these professionals. This initiative should foster a new breed of programmers who will be able to offer BPO services at a high level which in turn will produce better paying jobs for these individuals. The possibilities are endless, and the future is very promising.”

The PUC will hold a workshop on the raspberry pi on Monday, and a total of eighty teachers from forty-seven classrooms all across the country have enrolled in the program. The teachers are then expected to pass on the knowledge and innovation to their students.