Physical Computing on the Raspberry Pi

Year 6 have been working with Raspberry Pi’s over the last couple of weeks, coding in Scratch to make ‘physical computing’ come alive.  To do this they have used the General Purpose Input Output pins (GPIO pins) on the Pi’s connected to wires for their games controllers.  This week they have been challenged to create a traffic light system by connecting the wires from the GPIO pins to green, amber and red LED lights and code a sequence for them to switch on and off using Scratch.  Through tinkering, exploration and collaboration they have been computer coders, design and technology experts, scientists and electricians working to create algorithms, break down the challenge into parts and to debug (find and fix errors) to make their traffic lights work.  Well done Year 6 on a particularly difficult challenge.