Sonic Pi tutorial with Miss Philbin

Carrie Anne Philbin is the teacher we all wish we’d had. If you’ve been intrigued by the addition of Dr Sam Aaron’s Sonic Pi to the latest Raspbian update, Carrie Anne’s here to walk you through getting started. Carrie Anne (who was this year’s London Digital Hero award winner for her work on the Geek Gurl Diaries YouTube series, which you should go and check out immediately if you’ve not seen it before) has also written a comprehensive set of teaching materials and an entire Key Stage 3 scheme of work, which you can find at the Sonic Pi site. We really recommend you have a play with Sonic Pi, which you’ll find under the Programming option on the main menu in Raspbian. It’s an amazingly intuitive way to introduce kids (and adults) to key computing concepts (loops, algorithms, sequencing, conditionals – you name it, you’ll be using them) without having to spell these concepts out: as far as the kid sitting in front of the Pi is concerned, she’s just building a synthesiser and using it to make music. She’ll find she’s learned about loops, algorithms other fundamentals of computing as a side-effect. Here’s Sam, talking about Sonic Pi at this year’s Campus Party London. In case you hadn’t guessed, we’re extraordinarily excited about Sonic Pi. If you haven’t tried it out yet, go and have a play: you never know. You might find you have hidden talents!

URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/5065