What is Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi (RPi) is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV through an HDMI cable. The latest model B RPi has 2 USB ports to allow you to plug in a mouse and keyboard. It’s basically a miniature PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. The Raspberry Pi costs  around £40 for the newer model B (which has more RAM, an additional USB port and an Ethernet connection for networking) and can be purchased from places like Amazon . However it is not ready to use straight out of its’ tiny box, you will also need some other essential equipment: SD Memory card to hold the Operating System (OS), applications and data files (RPi uses this instead of a traditional Hard Disk). The card should be at least 2GB. There are instructions on the RPi website regarding how to flash (install) the OS (Linux) and what the latest recommended OS is. You can however buy SD Memory cards with the OS pre-installed for a premium of about £5. Micro USB Mains Power Wall Supply Charger to supply power to the RPi, this is the same as the supply fro many SmartPhones you may have around the home, but again you can buy a recommended one from retailers like Amazon for about £5. Display connection: The RPi can connect to a TV using an HDMI cable (£3), or to a computer with a DVI port using an HDMI to DVi cable (£4). At school I found that none of my monitors as yet have DVI but found that I could get the yellow composite video cable output and connect it to the yellow video input on my Multimedia Media Projector connection plate, no sound and a 640 x 480 resolution but I could then use my projector as the display and share with the class. Ethernet cable to connect to your router at home and thus out onto the internet, or a USB wireless dongle to attempt wireless networking, this however takes up a precious USB port and the power it requires will prevent the RPi from working. Therefore the fifth item you may want to get is: Powered USB hub to extend the functionality of the RPi e.g connect USB memory sticks, cameras etc… Raspberry PI User Guide is a useful little book to get you started but a lot of the info is out on the RPi forums anyway but it is good to have in one place offline. All in all these items may set you back another 340 but the RPi is still a cheap computer. What can the RPi do? Mostly anything a normal PC can. Depending on the OS build you have, your RPi might have the Scartch and Python programming environments installed as well as web browser software. In addition to this, once the RPi is up and running and you have internet access you can download applications like Open Office and GIMP. What can you use it for in school? Some ideas I have are as follows: Talk about environmental issues specifically energy consumption and wastage reductions with the RPi  compared to traditional desktops. Physical Computing using add-on boards like the PICO board to add sense to programs written in Scratch. Int 2 –Advanced Higher Computing pupils can be shown an alternative operating system , see another GUI but also practice with a Command Line Interface and  see an alternative programming language (Python) in action. Not got the budget or materials for it, but could get to the point that one of these boards is mounted on the back of any new DVI input monitor computing labs to allow pupils to quickly connect the RPi up to use standalone in addition to the main networked desktops.