When the Raspberry Pi Foundation first started developing the Code Editor, they set out to create a tool to help make learning text-based programming easy and accessible for children. Created with input from educators, the tool would be informed by their understanding of pedagogy and computing education.
Design considerations
There were many factors to consider to ensure the Editor was tailored for young people rather than for professional use. Young learners can find starting out with new programming tools tricky, adding to the cognitive load of learning a new subject matter. A key aspect of the Editor’s simplicity was removing the need to install any additional software by enabling the Code Editor to be used in a web browser. Consideration was also given to making it easy to find key functions, such as how to write and run code, how to save or download code, and how to check code.
”…(The Code Editor) looked the easiest to […] understand for kids who have never been near programming, the least kind of scary and frightening of all of the ones I’ve looked at.” – Teacher feedback
Another factor to consider was accessibility, including making it easy to switch settings between light and dark modes and between small, medium, and large text sizes. The Editor has also been optimised for mobile and tablet use to allow it to be used by the widest possible number of students.
“You have brought the joy of coding to a rural area that doesn’t have a lot of money. This has opened doors for so many of my pupils as they can now code on their phone or tablet.” – Teacher feedback
New features are only made available once they comply with the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s safeguarding policies and with the Children’s code of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Simple and easy classroom management
The next step was thinking about how educators could use the Code Editor to teach programming and how to build upon the simple and age-appropriate interface to better support young people in the classroom.
User research interviews were conducted in the discovery stage, covering exploratory research and testing of a prototype to understand educators’ needs. These insights have helped to steer the development of Code Editor for Education.
Schools are able to sign up for a free account. Once verified, schools can invite teachers to join, add students, and organise them into classes. An unlimited number of projects, lessons, teachers, and students can be added to a school’s account, all for free.
“[it’s] straightforward for students to log in with teacher assigned details, [it’s] great being able to reset passwords myself and not having to give email addresses“ – Teacher feedback
Create engaging coding lessons
With a school account, teachers can create custom coding projects and share them with their students.
Python is often the text-based language young people learn when they take their first steps away from a block-based programming environment like Scratch. In the Code Editor, students can use Python to code their own games, art, and animations.
Support for the web development languages HTML and CSS allows students to design their own websites and preview them directly in the Editor interface.
“The fact that it is both for HTML/CSS and then Python is great as the students have a one-stop shop for IDEs.”
Lee Willis, Head of ICT and Computing, Newcastle High School for Girls
Future Features
Informed by ongoing teacher feedback, new features will continue to be added over the coming months. This will include enabling custom instructions to sit alongside starter code projects and providing teacher-to-student feedback capabilities.
One of the most recent updates has been the expansion of the Python libraries, which have provided more flexibility for code projects and allowed learners easy access to exciting new subject areas like data science.
Find out more and register for a free school account.
About the Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.
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