| Last week I posted a review of the Kobo Touch 2.0, Kobo’s latest entry-level dedicated ebook reader. My biggest complaint with the device is the screen. It lacks a frontlight and it uses an old low resolution E Ink screen from 4 years ago. I’m working on a comparison between the Kobo Touch 2.0 and […] |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
E Ink Needs to Discontinue Low Resolution Screens
Liz’s 10 deserted island books
| Ed. Note: This is the 8th in our series of books we'd take with us on a deserted island if we could only pick ten. Today's list comes from Liz Tousey, a librarian and Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Becoming a Shakespeare scholar was one of my secret imaginary dream careers in undergrad- along with professional musician, radio DJ, and librarian. I'm so lucky to have one! An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray Hilarious and farcical narration and plot, with soulful and poignant monologues…Catnip for people who enjoy good character progression. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut has an amazing way of holding up something that we think is ever so normal, and pointing out to us that it's actually quite bizarre. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Every time I finish one, I take a deep breath and think to myself, "Wow her books are good." (Behind the Scenes at the Museum was my close second, in case you needed to know.) How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran Bawdy, hilarious, piercing, and one of the best coming-of-age novels I've ever read. I secretly want every young woman to read this, but especially those with an inner (or outer) rocker girl. Great for the gents as well. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera If you don’t love this book within the first two pages, put it down and we shall never speak of it again. You might open it for the promise of sex and revolution, but you'll stay for the philosophy. Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas Acknowledging that most romance novels follow a fairly predictable story arc, the thing that separates Thomas from other writers of her ilk is that up until the end of the book, you find yourself thinking, "Things don't always work out the way we want. Maybe this time they won't end up together… Maybe this time she'll break our hearts." Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint I first read this collection of short stories in high school, and (20ish years later) recently listened to the audiobook. Like Diagon Alley or the Shire, this book (and the others in the same universe) makes you long to visit De Lint's fictional city of Newford. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin This book is clearly for book nerds by a book nerd. It’s very funny and very quotable. There might be a good reason as to why it seems to appear on every library’s Staff Favorites curated list that I’ve seen. The Condensed Oxford English Dictionary Having previously worked in higher ed for 10 years, I LOVE LOVE LOVED having the OED online at my fingertips, and teaching students about all of its fantastic awesomeness. It's so easy to fall into an etymology hole for an hour or two at a time. Liz Tousey is a librarian and a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive  |
Quaver, the analogue looping piano
| Music hacks are my favourite hacks of all, and this one had me bounding around the office with the video below playing on my laptop so I could share it with people yesterday. Meet Quaver, the multiplayer piano. With a Raspberry Pi, some magnetic pickups, and the open-source Sooper Looper (which I am downloading as soon as I have finished writing this post), Mike and Sean from MajorMega hacked an old upright piano into an instrument that can loop up to four separate tracks, and upload your results to the internet to be listened to when you get home. This is all part of Lancaster’s Keys for the City project, where pianos are decorated and left around the city for the public to play; Quaver is the project’s stand-out this year. (And not just because of the artwork on the outside.)
The post Quaver, the analogue looping piano appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Monday, September 14, 2015
Top 10 Best Bookseller Signs
| Booksellers have the wittiest signage in order to capture peoples attention or just to standout in the crowd. All over Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom you are likely to run into one. Today, we are going to take a look at the top 10 best bookstore signs.
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How to get Send to Kindle Working on Windows 10
| Send to Kindle is a popular document management tool to send e-books, PDF files and other content from your computer to your e-reader. When Windows 10 came out a few months ago, it prevented this software from working correctly. Today, you will learn how to get this program working on Windows 10 computers and tablets. To make “SendToKindle” work in Windows 10, goto “C:\Program Files (x86)\Amazon\SendToKindle” in the file explorer. Right click on SendToKindle.exe and select the properties option. Then Hit the compatibility tab, then hit run compatibility trouble shooter, it’ll do some magic, then hit save these settings. Now try to send your document, it should work now! |
How do you determine how much an e-book should cost?
| Authors who elect to self-publish through Kindle Direct Publishing or Nook Press often have trouble deciding how much their e-book should cost. Major publishers have dramatically increased the prices in the last calendar year from $9.99 to $14.99. If you are going to be submitting your book to sell online, how much should it cost? One of the biggest advantages that self-published authors have is being able to determine their own price. Major publishers on the other hand dictate the price, and the original author doesn’t have any control. Amazon offered some pricing advice to authors, when they were battling Hachette over a contract dispute. The Amazon Books Team posted on the Kindle Forum saying”For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000.” Meanwhile, Mark Coker the CEO of Smashwords knows a thing or two about self-publishing. He wrote in a blog post a few years ago “we found $2.99 books, on average, netted the authors more earnings (profit per unit, multiplied by units sold) than books priced at $6.99 and above. When we look at the $2.99 price point compared to $9.99, $2.99 earns the author slightly more, yet gains the author about four times as many readers. $2.99 e-books earned the authors six times as many readers than books priced over $10.” Mark went on to mention “If an author can earn the same or greater income selling lower cost books, yet reach significantly more readers, then, drum roll please, it means the authors who are selling higher priced books through traditional publishers are at an extreme disadvantage to indie authors in terms of long term platform building. The lower-priced books are building author brand faster. Never mind that an indie author earns more per $2.99 unit sold ($1.80-$2.10) than a traditionally published author earns at $9.99 ($1.25-$1.75).” So, we have some very compelling data from the big companies that are involved in self-publishing, in one way or another, but what are authors saying about e-book pricing? Patrick E. McLean, author of How to Succeed in Evil, wrote that increasing the price of his book increased his even more modest income. That said, his sales were tiny and the original price was just shy of free. So low, in fact, that readers might have seen it as indicating low quality. He said “All we can know it what happened with that one book for that one period. So here's what happened when I raised the price of How to Succeed in Evil from $0.99 to $2.99—Sales went up. I was averaging about nine copies a day. Now I'm up to 17. It's crazy to think that an increase in price causes and increase in sales. I think if I had left the price at 99 cents I would now also be at 14 e-books a day. I don't think price matters that much.” Meanwhile , Russell Blake, said that shifting his prices didn't really move sales very much, but he didn't substantiate it with any specifics. John Keliher, a writer of books about math, said he saw a signficant uptick in his admittedly modest overall sales by lowering prices, enough that he made an extra $100 per month with lower prices. He wrote, "At $5.00 I sell about 50 e-books a month, but at $2.99 I sell about 120 e-books a month. Consequently, my profit is greater when I price my e-books at $2.99." In the end, major publishers are screwing readers over high e-book pricing and the ball is in the indie authors court to be able to demonstrate that they can prove to the big trade houses that they know more about cost than they do. |
Microsoft to Announce Surface 4 at October 4th Event
| Microsoft has just announced that they are having a press event on October 4th, where they are expected to announce the Surface 4 tablet. It seems very likely that it will be powered by an Intel 6th-gen Core "Skylake" processor and run Windows 10. Microsoft made it quite clear that their future Surface tablet is being catered to note taking rather than sketching, this is evident when they moved from Wacom to N-Trig. Microsoft further drove the point home with purchasing N-Trigs stylus technology earlier this year. |
OverDrive and Pearson bring digital textbooks to Napa Valley Unified School District students
| Students at Napa Valley Unified School District’s (NVUSD) high schools in Napa and American Canyon, California, will be able to access their math textbooks digitally using iPads, Chromebooks or other devices, beginning this month for the 2015-2016 school year. Thanks to a new partnership with OverDrive, the leading eBook and audiobook platform for schools, and Pearson textbooks, NVUSD students in grades 9-11 can access and use their Pearson CME textbooks from the same OverDrive platform that currently supports assigned novels, leisure reading, and other content from many top publishers. "Students and teachers have already benefited from OverDrive's streamlined access to resources for curriculum needs and we are looking forward to expanding our available resources to textbooks in a digital format," said Kate MacMillan, Coordinator, Library and Digital Services for Napa Valley Unified School District. As an early adopter of the OverDrive K-12 platform, NVUSD has been meeting students' and educators' needs with a custom combination of digital content for over two years. NVUSD staff selected digital books from millions of titles and thousands of publishers, which aligned with units of study and were compatible with all major devices, including the many Chromebooks purchased by the District. You can see the full story in the press release here.  |
The books the cats of OverDrive recommend
| Here at OverDrive, we love our literary pets! We asked our cats which books they think everyone should read and got some very fun and amusing responses…
Salem lives with Valentine Volk (Consortium Consultant) and recommends One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Goose lives with Sean Kase (IT Technician) and recommends No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal.
Lady PawPaw lives with Meghan Volchko (Collection Development Specialist). She is not a Bad Kitty, but she does love the holidays!
Clover lives with Sydney Kalnay (Training Specialist) and recommends Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Maple lives with Karlee Reader (School Launch Specialist) and recommends To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Joan Jett lives with Liz Tousey (Collection Development Analyst) and recommends The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw.
Gatsby lives with Christine Bober *Metadata Specialist) and recommends The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Mooy lives with Katie Blachman (Launch Specialist) and recommends Autobiography by Morrissey.
Toaster lives with Kenny Cruse (Metadata Specialist) and recommends Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Kiki lives with Shannon Hunt (Training Manager) and recommends Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.
Belle lives with Marla Levine (Collection Development Specialist) and she recommends Yoga for Dummies.
Click here to view all of these titles, as well as some of our other favorite 'Cat Reads' in Marketplace! *Title availability may vary by platform and geographic location*  |
Cube solver
| A quick survey of the desks at Pi Towers reveals thirteen Rubik’s Cubes in various states of done-ness. Gordon’s brain doesn’t work without a cube to play with, and Ben appears to breed them in his desk drawers. (Rubik’s cubes are not the worst thing that breeds in Ben’s drawers.) With this Cube Solver from Maxim Tsoy and Wilbert Swinkels, we finally have a way to completely replace both Gordon and Ben with robots. The Cube Solver uses a Compute Module to run the cube solving algorithms and move the grips and motors; you can find full details of the build and all the code you need at Maxim’s blog if you ever feel the need to replace the cuber in your life with a more compact solution. The post Cube solver appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Are People Enamored with Audiobooks?
The global audiobook industry is currently worth 2.6 billion dollars and part of the reason why we have seen a dramatic increase in profitability is due to digital. This is a large amount of money but is the average person really enamored with the audio format? The overwhelming majority say no. We poised the question a few weeks ago, do you listen to audiobooks? 537 people responded and 38%, which represented 205 votes said no. 20% said they listen to them regularly and 18% said casually. I find it distributing that audiobooks are so accessible now, either via dedicated services such as Audible or your local library. Almost every single novel from a major publisher has an audio edition that is released at the same time as print, often voiced by well known celebrities. The fact that people have still not embraced the medium is quite telling. It seems people still prefer reading print and e-books, but not audiobooks. |
Canadian Print Newspapers to Disappear by 2025
| Daily paid circulation as a percentage of Canadian households, has fallen from just under 50% in 1995 to 20% in 2014. If these trends continue by 2025 print newspapers will only be in 5% of homes, leading many papers to go out of business. The largest newspaper conglomerate in Canada is the Postmedia Group. They pretty well have monopolies in every major Canadian city except Toronto and is controlled by hedge fund operators, such as New York-based Golden Tree Asset Management who have a 35% stake. In a bid to make the papers profitable they have been down sizing staff from a few hundred to a few dozen. Newspapers have been notoriously resistant to change and are paying the price. For example Kijiji, which is larger than Craig’s List in Canada, came along and newspapers did not want work with them, now classified revenue is gone. When newspapers disappear who will pick up the slack? Will we see an influx of citizen journalism on Facebook or Twitter? Pew has just released a a new report that states 63% of US Facebook and Twitter users rely on the social networks as news sources, which is a 11% increase from two years ago. |
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Google Books is in Limbo
| Google Books was one of the most ambitious book projects in history. The plan was to scan all of the worlds books and make them publicly available. Due to years in court fighting authors and publishers the project is in limbo. In 2002 Google begun scanning books and currently has over 30 million titles, putting it in a league with the world's larger libraries. If you want to see how they compare, the library of Congress has around 37 million books available. The book scanning project was not cleared by the publishers or authors because Google was targeting books that were rare, out of print or whose copyright had expired. They also had high idealism, scanning the worlds books, they thought they would win people over, they were wrong. Google began clashing with publishers in 2006 and formal lawsuits were brought to the courts. This resulted in many of the books Google put online just having snippets, and not including the entire text. In 2008 all sides managed to reach a settlement to make the full library available to the public, for pay, and to institutions. In the settlement agreement, Google promised to put terminals in libraries, for Google Books for educational use, but never got around to doing that. The settlement managed to placate some publishers and authors, but other organizations continued to fight Google. This resulted in a 2011 decision by a federal judge to side with the critics and he threw out the 2008 settlement, adding that aspects of the copyright issue would be more appropriately decided by the legislature. A few years later in 2013 a judge threw out a class action suit by the Authors Guild, that saved Google over a billion in settlement fees. Google continues to fight for the survival for their book scanning project and there is no end in sight. The courts have basically said its up to all parties to come up with a licensing solution that makes sense. The Authors Guild is strongly lobbying for a complex mechanism, that would allow the owners of scanned, out-of-print libraries, such as Google, to make a limited set of them available with payouts to authors. The dream of an internet full of all of the out of print books humanity has ever written will likely never come to fruition. |
Amazon Reveals the Specs for the $50 Kindle Fire Tablet
| A few weeks ago we reported that Amazon was developing a very affordable entry level Fire tablet. In order to offer this device for the $50 price point the Seattle company had to sacrifice performance. Today, we have new information that breaks down the specs. The new six inch entry level Kindle Fire could has a six inch screen and has a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. This is a bit of a downgrade from last years six inch model, which had a resolution of 1280 x 800. Underneath the hood on the upcoming 2015 six inch tablet is a quad-core ARM cortex-A7 processor with Mali-450 graphics, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage. You will be able to snap pictures with the rear facing 2MP camera or access on-demand video chat via the 0.3MP front camera. I guess Amazon is trying to offer such a ridiculously cheap tablet that you could buy for your kids and not think twice. Maybe there is a student in your household, that could also benefit from this, without having to worry about it being lost or stolen. In the end, this is affordable because Amazon knows you will buy e-books, apps, magazines, newspapers and buy videos. |
Amazon Likely to Announce New Devices Very Soon
| Recent history suggests that Amazon is likely to announce new products soon, and it could happen as early as this upcoming week. Looking back at the past few years, Amazon has announced new Kindle ereaders and Fire tablets in the month of September. Last year they unveiled their lineup of new devices on September 17th. […] |
Friday, September 11, 2015
Indie Authors Should be Using Twitch
| When you are writing a book, sometimes its best to read passages aloud in order to gauge if its flows correctly. In other cases you may want to create an audiobook edition of your upcoming title. No matter where you are in the writing pipeline indie authors should be using Twitch. You may have heard of Twitch in the news, when it was purchased by Amazon last year. In essence, it got its start by being one of the best platforms for E-Sports and other gaming-related programs. Content on the site can either be viewed live, or viewed on an on-demand basis. In the last six months the platform has expanded to include categories for audio and creative pursuits. Twitch is in the top 10 of most popular websites in the United States with 43 million people per month watching live video streams. This is the perfect avenue for authors to build a non-conventional base of users and correspond with them directly in real time. Once you have amassed over a few thousand followers Twitch will cut you in for a revenue share program, in addition to being able to accept donations immediately. I think right now Twitch is an untapped market for authors who want to read passages of their book and cultivate a following. It will give them practice on reading in a public forum and aid them in eventually self-narrating their own audiobook. In order to get started on Twitch you want to download a free program called Open Broadcast Software. It is the most intuitive to use and works on MAC, PC and Linux. It took me a few days to setup all my scenes properly, because I have more of an advanced setup, but you can get started the day you install it, as long as you have a webcam. You also need to create a Twitch account and setup your channel details. If you have a Facebook Author Page or Blog, this shouldn’t be difficult. When you click on your Twitch Dashboard under Playing you want to add either “creative” or “music” so people on Twitch or using one of their apps can easily find your broadcast. Finally, in a separate window make sure your channel is up, so you can talk directly to fans. Obviously with Twitch, it isn’t as easy to use as Twitter or Facebook, but millions of authors have saturated those platforms. It may not be the most simple thing in the world, but I would always recommend getting in on the ground floor of a new category to self-promote your work and get immediate feedback from your fans. |
Authors Guild Study Shows Most Live Under the Poverty Line
| The Authors Guild is poised to release their first author earnings study since 2009. What they found should be a cause for concern in regards to how much the average writer is generating solely from their writing. It is dramatically apparent that most of them live below the Federal Poverty line, which is less than $11,670 per year. The survey, was conducted earlier in the year and is based on responses from 1,674 Guild members, 1,406 of whom identified either as a full-time author, or a part-time one. 4% of the writers taking part in the survey were indie authors and 33% reported having self-published at least one book. Mary Rasenberger, executive director at the Guild, acknowledged that the findings paint a grim picture. "When it comes to income there is no good news to report," she said. Citing a swirl of factors, from online piracy to publisher consolidation to the rise of Amazon (and the shuttering of brick and mortar bookstores), Rasenberger said the takeaway from the survey is that authors should be, receiving higher royalties from publishers. "Authors need to be cut in more equitably on the profits their publishers see, or we'll stop seeing the quality of work the industry was built on." |
Pottermore Abandons Gaming with New Website Relaunch
| Pottermore originally launched in April 2012 and the website was initially developed to sell all seven Harry Potter titles in the digital format. One of the big draws was a gaming system which appealed to a younger demographic and allowed you to join in on the early adventures of Harry Potter. You could join a house and play mini-games, something a small but loyal audience continues to enjoy. Susan Jurevics the current Pottermore CEO has announced that in the coming weeks the service will undergo a total redesign and drop all gaming elements from the site. In an interview with the Bookseller, CEO Susan Jurevics said the changes had been driven by identifying the core users of the site, how technology had developed since its original launch and the need to reflect that the Harry Potter universe is no longer confined to the original seven books. A stage play is currently under development, and the first of three new films, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", is to be released next year. Starting this October fully illustrated edition of the Harry Potter series, with drawings by Jim Kay will be also sold on the site. Over the years J.K. Rowling has also used Pottermore as a vehicle to steadily reveal secrets of the wizarding world, delving into the histories of beloved (and some not-so-beloved) characters, and discussing her thoughts on the books and characters. One of her biggest bombshells was that she really wanted to have Harry and Hermione get together. Her musings and short fiction will also be a central theme to the websites relaunch. The main reason why Pottermore is being revised is because when it originally launched the iPad was’t invented yet and people did not sleep with their smartphones. The current iteration of Pottermore is a desktop and laptop experience and this is something the company wants to change. They need the service to be totally mobile friendly and have all of their content show up in the search engine, something that it is unable to do now due to the dynamic nature of the gaming system. I think Pottermores lasting legacy is how it shook up the publishing world. When you buy the e-book edition from any of the worlds top digital bookstores, such as Amazon or Kobo you are actually redirected to the Pottermore website and those sites earn commissions. This is something that had not been done before and hasn’t been duplicated since. |
Kristin’s 10 Deserted Island Books
| Ed. Note: This is the 7th in our series of books we'd take with us on a deserted island if we could only pick ten. Today's list comes from Kirstin Milks, a librarian and Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – Yeah I admit it, I'm a basic white girl. Whatever #sorrynotsorry. I love this story and Elizabeth Bennet is a female protagonist who I highly revere. Plus, who doesn't have a crush on the brooding, well-mannered, if not prejudice, Mr. Darcy? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling – I need some magic on this island and who better than The Boy Who Lived. I love Azkaban! The introduction of Sirius Black and a further explanation of HP's family history is one of my favorite parts of the series. The only problem with this book is it's not 700 pages. A Room of One's Own – Virginia Woolf's essays on writing, independence, and finding a small amount of success as a female is a piece of literature I can read and reread to find inspiration and wisdom. Collected Poems 1901-1962 by TS Eliot – Eliot's poetry is melancholy and hauntingly beautiful. I could reread the Four Quartets over and over again and feel like I'm reading a new piece each time. I will never get bored of his poetry and am astounded by his mastery. A must for a long stay in an isolated location. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh – I will need to laugh if I'm expected to remain sane on this island and I can always find good giggles in Brosh's autobiographical piece with amazingly terrible drawings she made on her computer. The Awakening by Kate Chopin – Everyone hated me in high school English while I fiercely defended Edna, the protagonist of this masterful piece of feminist literature. I loved the deeper story about a woman struggling for independence and self-actualization. It spoke to me in a way no book had until that point in time and I love it to this day. What now AP English class! I'm stuck on a deserted island and am all independent-like! City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg – I haven't read it yet and it's a stout 900+ page book that is supposed to be the next great American novel. I think I will finally have time to read it while marooned. The Ultimate Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook by David Borgenicht & Joshua Piven & Ben Winters – A survival guide…..yeah no duh I want this while trapped on a deserted island! Plus the 'Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks' series are pretty funny and will also provide entertainment. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien – Yes the whole series. An epic fantasy seems like the perfect companion to the boredom and potentially hopelessness of lonely island dwelling. Frodo and the gang will give me hope for a better world and Golem will remind me to stay away from deep dark island caves *shudder*. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction – Yes I am cheating here, but no one said I couldn't choose an anthology! Now I get a little love from a whole lot of spectacular authors. What can I say, this girl knows how to get the most bang for her buck.
Kristin Milks is a librarian and a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive  |
Raspberry Pi in Estonia project launch
| If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen some pictures of me standing next to important looking people in suits, handing out Raspberry Pi kits on Tuesday. This was the launch event for an educational project we’ve been working on with the British Embassy in Tallinn over the last few months. Back in February of this year, just after the Raspberry Pi 2 launch, we were invited to mentor at the Garage48 Hardware & Arts Hackathon at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Rachel and I attended, and were amazed by the projects the teams were coming up with – some of which used Raspberry Pi. We were there to offer technical advice as well as help prepare teams for their pitch presentations. The event was a serious competition with teams thinking about creating businesses off the back of the projects, rather than throwaway apps you might expect from regular hackathons. Somewhat casually, it was announced that the Prime Minister would be attending the presentations and awards ceremony. At age 35, Taavi Rõivas is the youngest government leader in the European Union. It wasn’t just a fleeting visit – he stuck around all day and took notes throughout the presentations. We were introduced to him and he knew of Raspberry Pi (he has one but hasn’t got around to using it yet). He said that he’d visited the Pi factory in Pencoed and I took the opportunity to have my photo taken with him. The winning team was from the Estonian Army, who used a Pi to provide feedback during target practice. Read about this project and the runners up at estonianworld.com. After the hackathon we had meetings with some Education organisations and the British Embassy and we ended up kicking off a project to get Raspberry Pis into schools across Estonia. We offered to fund half of the kits, and Transferwise kindly provided match funding to cover the rest. We were also involved in HITSA‘s Informatics Teachers Summer School which took place in August – as well as providing match funding for 60 Pi 2s and the excellent CamJam Sensor Kits, I gave a webinar to introduce the Pi and the Foundation’s mission to the teachers. We also granted two Estonian teachers a place on Picademy North in May. We were then invited to an event marking the opening of the hubs, which took place earlier this week, and the Embassy had arranged for the British Ambassador and the Prime Minister to attend. The day started with me giving seminars to two groups of children from the school (a very large school combining what we’d call Primary and Secondary); then after lunch we set up the room which soon filled with more children, teachers and the press. Transferwise handed out t-shirts they had made for the occasion and the room was coated in Raspberry Pi flyers and balloons. There was even Raspberry Pie on offer!
The Prime Minister arrived and the event began with the Ambassador Chris giving a speech saying how proud he was to be involved in the project; followed by the Prime Minister saying a few words, thanking the Foundation and Transferwise. Then I spoke of the Foundation’s original goal to create a computer the price of a textbook to make it accessible to all, and of the great opportunities created for children all over Estonia. The three of us then joined up with Transferwise to hand out the kits to a representative of each of the 20 schools.
The Picademy trained teachers also presented. Birgy Lorenz showed what the Raspberry Pi could do, including a demo of Sonic Pi from the kids accompanied by Birgy on a real piano; and Maria Malozjomov explained the possibilities of using the Raspberry Pi with young children, and showed a video of her children unboxing and setting up: There was then some time for demonstrations of the Raspberry Pis we’d set up – ones for Scratch, Minecraft, Sonic Pi, Python & Picamera and one with the Sense HAT. The Prime Minister managed to get himself a seat at the Minecraft table and was seen playing with it between speeches: Even Prime Ministers like to play Minecraft: Pi Edition I also happened to have an Astro Pi Flight kit running a copy of the actual flight SD card with the Astro Pi competition code with me: The Astro Pi flight kit running the MCP The launch event ended with a mega Picamera selfie! I set up a push button stop motion loop in Python and triggered it to take a few photos with the crowd behind me:
The mega selfie moment captured The British Ambassador Chris Holtby said:
After the event I gave a seminar to the Tallinn Informatics Teachers Group to follow on from the webinar at the Summer School. See this storify of all the day's tweets; check out the British Embassy’s photo album on Facebook; and you can watch the full video of the event on YouTube. A great big thanks to the Krislin and the team at the British Embassy in Tallinn, the Ambassador Chris Holtby, lead teachers Birgy Lorenz and Maria Malozjomov, Mari-Liis at HITSA, all the team at Transferwise, and of course Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas. The post Raspberry Pi in Estonia project launch appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
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