Berry Exciting News: Free Classroom Materials with the Raspberry Pi and the Wolfram Language

Editorial note:

The following post has been modified from its original publication on the Wolfram Blog.

What exactly is the Raspberry Pi, and why is this news so exciting?

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, bare-bones computer available for around $35. It’s designed to act just like a desktop computer, plugging into a monitor and getting input from a mouse and keyboard. Because of its size, it can be embedded into objects, adding a layer of physical computing to maker projects — for example, controlling sensors! It can also be a great way for students to learn to code.

The Wolfram Language, the programming language used in Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, has been a coding option on the Raspberry Pi for years. The addition of these sample projects to the Raspberry Pi website, however, makes learning and using the Wolfram Language even easier. Students can work on coding projects from either the device itself or through the Wolfram Cloud, as explained in this blog.

Although computational thinking ≠ coding, learning to program with the Raspberry Pi can help students better understand computational thinking skills through practical application, from decomposing code into manageable chunks to creating algorithms to perform certain tasks. These projects can be a starting point for getting students to use computational thinking as a problem-solving lens.

Wolfram Research is pleased to announce further collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation as part of supporting makers across the world through education. A collection of ten Wolfram Language projects has been launched on the foundation’s projects site. These projects range from creating weather dashboards to building machine learning classifiers to using AI for facial recognition.

The goal is to put the power of computational intelligence into the hands of anyone who wants access — democratizing the skills that will increasingly be needed to innovate and discover what is possible with modern computation.

By providing easy-to-follow, step-by-step tutorials that result in a finished, functioning piece of software, Wolfram aims to lower the barrier of entry for those who wish to get immediately started programming, building and making. Projects can be completely built on the Raspberry Pi or within a web browser in the Wolfram Cloud.

Building the Computational Future

Since 2013, the Wolfram Language and Mathematica have been freely available on the Raspberry Pi system as part of NOOBS. Stephen Wolfram wrote in his announcement of the collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, “I’m a great believer in the importance of programming as a central component of education.” And over five years later, there is indeed increasing demand in the labor force for technical programming skills — part of why Wolfram continues to push computational thinking as a primary means, method and framework for preparing individuals for success in the future of work.

The Wolfram Language is particularly well suited for this mission, as its high-level symbolic nature and linguistic capabilities not only tell machines precisely what to do, but can also be easily read by nontechnical people — the world’s first and only true computational communication language understandable by both humans and AI.

“These projects provide a fantastic opportunity for code clubs around the world to step into the power of using the Wolfram Language to springboard their computational thinking skills’ development,” says Jon McLoone, cofounder of Computer-Based Math™ (CBM).

Project Tasters

• Which Harry Potter character do you look like?

In this project, students use images of Harry Potter characters to train their own AI facial recognition app. With a simple Import command, the Wolfram Language can import Google search images to train a classifier function:

The resulting classifier can be used to give a best guess at the Harry Potter character most likely to be shown in a photo. For example:

• Crossword solver

Students use pattern matching in word dictionaries to create an app that will suggest possible crossword answers.

They use Wolfram|Alpha’s Knowledgebase to find possible word matches and create an interface for the user to type in patterns for their crossword:

• Face swap

In this project, students start with an image of people they know. For example…

They use the Wolfram Language function FindFaces to extract and find the positions of the faces in the image. They swap the positions and, with a little tinkering at the edges, use ImageCompose to create this:

The first ten project materials are available now, with more planned throughout the year. It will be interesting and exciting to see what people build with the Wolfram Language and the Raspberry Pi.

About the blogger:

Alec Titterton

Alec Titterton is the CBM Content Development Manager at Wolfram Research Europe Ltd. He has also written for the Wolfram blog.