Refill the coffee machine, unpack the sacrificial Babbages, and refresh the micro SD cards — it’s staff Picademy time!
Staff Picademy
Once a year, when one of our all-staff meeting brings together members of the Raspberry Pi team from across the globe, we host staff Picademy at our office. It’s two days of making and breaking where the coding-uninitiated — as well as the more experienced people! — are put through their paces and rewarded with Raspberry Pi Certified Educator status at the end.
Lest we forget the sacrificial Babbages and all they have done in the name of professional development
What is Picademy?
Picademy is our free two-day professional development programme where educators come together to gain knowledge and confidence in digital making and computing. On Day 1, you learn new skills; on Day 2, you put your learning to the test by finding some other participants and creating a project together, from scratch!
Our Picademy events in the United Kingdom and in North America have hosted more than 2000 Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, who have gone on to create after-school coding clubs, makerspaces, school computing labs, and other amazing things to increasethe accessibility of computing and digital making for tens of thousands of young people.
Why do we run staff Picademy?
Because we stand by what we preach: we believe in learning through making, and we want our staff to be able to attend events, volunteer at Picademy, Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and Raspberry Jams, and feel confident in what they say and do.
And also, because Picademy is really fun!
Stuff and things, bits and bobs: staples of any good Picademy
You don’t need to be techy to work at Raspberry Pi: we’re not all engineers. Our staff ranges from educators and web developers to researchers, programme managers, administrators, and accountants. And we think everyone should give coding a shot, so we love getting our staff together to allow them to explore a new skill — and have some fun in the process.
I *think* this has something to do with The MagPi and a Christmas tree?
At our staff Picademy events, we’ve made everything from automated rock bands out of tin foil to timelapse buggies, and it really is a wonderful experience to see people come together and, within two days, take a skillset that may be completely new to them and use it to create a fully working, imaginative project.
Timelapse buggy is a thing of beauty…as is Brian
Your turn
If you’re an educator looking to try something new in your classroom, keep an eye on our channels, because we’ll be announcing dates for Picademy 2019 soon. You will find them on the Picademy page and see them pop up if you follow the #Picademy tag on Twitter. We’ll also announce the dates and locations in our Raspberry Pi LEARN newsletter, so be sure to sign up.
And if you’d like to join the Raspberry Pi team and build something silly and/or amazing at next year’s staff Picademy, we have roles available in the UK, Ireland, and North America.
Website: LINK
