Raspberry Pi takes root in primary schools to boost computer literacy

Sagah (middle) presenting a certificate to a teacher at the Raspberry Pi training programme in UTS in Sibu, Sarawak.

Sarawak aims to train 1,265 primary school teachers on Raspberry Pi by the end of this year.

Raspberry Pi is a low-cost, credit-card sized computer which enables students to explore computing and learn programming languages like Scratch and Python.

State Education, Innovation and Talent Development Minister Datuk Roland Sagah said that to achieve the target, his ministry planned to train at least one teacher from every primary school in Sarawak, spreading across 30 education districts.

“This means that by the end of this year, we would have trained 1,265 teachers on the basics of using Raspberry Pi,” he said at the certificate presentation of a Raspberry Pi programme.

The three-week programme was jointly organised by University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) and Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak.

According to Sagah, his ministry had in 2021 carried out an ambitious aim to foster innovation and digital skills among young children through the use of Raspberry Pi.

“To date, our ministry has provided over 9,000 units of Raspberry Pi sets including monitors, keyboards and mouses to primary schools all over Sarawak.

“This is in line with our objective to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as well as Information and Communications Technology (ICT) education to students in the state,” he added.

In the past two months, UTS has conducted six pilot training sessions for 221 teachers in Sibu, Sarikei, Julau, Kanowit, Song, Belaga, Meradong, Selangau and Betong.

The training by UTS and its partners comprises four levels spread over three years.

“It has been conducted in the southern and central region, but will also be extended to the northern region of the state,” he said, adding that the programme would encourage pupils to learn computing and become confident in problem solving.