A slice of Pi

Jonah was the happiest I’ve ever seen him today. I’d bought him a Raspberry Pi for his seventh birthday. Well, I’d instructed Tom to get one. I hate ordering stuff over the internet – too many forms and stuff, plus Amazon is the devil incarnate.

I’ve been writing blogs for an IT recruiter as my job as a digital copywriter – thought leadership pieces I’ve struggled with as a consumate Luddite and a technophobe, but with an Aspie son, I’d started to sit up and listen to the sage wisdom I was churning out professionally week after week.

With the proliferation of tech start -ups making East London their home (I’m quoting my own IT recruitment blogs here), the government is turning its attention to the lack of good computing education in the country.

Kids too often are au fait with video games, user interfaces and programs, but don’t have the foggiest when it comes to actually making a computer DO something. And so as a somewhat pushy parent, (I use the term loosely. Jonah has his own direction, and no amount of shoving from me will make the blindest bit of difference) I decided that a Raspberry Pii would give him – and his sister, some sort of advantage, some way down the line – particularly if Jonah continues to have no respect for school.

Jonah wasn’t all that impressed when he opened it. Despite the hype that Tom and I  mustered at the circuit board that would be his own computer, like many seven year olds, he hasn’t had much to do with the innards of any gadgetry and so didn’t get it, immediately. This despite being more than au fait with any technology he can get his hands on within hours than we are – our iPhones for example, which we gave both the kids to use as gaming machines when we got upgrades a while back, or the DSi his grandmother brought him despite my better judgement, or the iPad Mini he’d managed to score for Christmas.

Nope, we’re not *that* sort of parents. Tom had bought it for my birthday, because I spend most evenings after kids’ bedtime wondering what to do with my life and wasting it it scrolling through Facebook and latterly Twitter, torturing myself with what everyone else is doing becuase they haven’t got to relieve babysitters every night after work.

But I’d baulked at the idea of having an iPad, being much more comfortable with luxuries, when I can get them, such as new shoes or the handbag that I eventually bought myself – because like many women, I expect, (my mother – a left handed tech expert excepted) I prefer tangible objects to the mooted capabilities of technology. Plus I’m sometimes scared of stuff I don’t understand. (Re-reading this two years later as a tech expert and pretty much over shoes and handbags, this quip is faintly embarrassing, but i’ll try not to edit my younger self too much.)

But with Jonah specifying “the latest phone” on his letter to Father Christmas, I thought he’d be happier with the iPad than me. And he was: nearly weeping when he opened it on Christmas Day – and this is a boy who displays little emotion except rage and sugar highs.

It was a relief. Under the Christmas branch we’d set up as an apologetic excuse for a Christmas tree, in the Switzerland apartment we’d rented in for our first family holiday in almost a year – an attempt to get both kids skiing while they’re both relatively close to the ground, Jonah renewed his heavily cultivated belief in the magic of Christmas. It was a sparse celebration: a mini tree cost approximately fourty quid in Swiss francs, but the mountains were breathtakingly beautiful and it was worth every last Swiss Franc. But held captive 1,800 feet above sea level, we could barely afford to buy a tin of beans, and with new pyjamas and a bar of Toblerone being the other main presents, both the kids were trying very hard to look happy about their relatively meagre haul.

And although they’d both had a stocking, they’d waited until after (eyewateringly expensive) ski school and a rustic lunch of potage and Croque Madame to open the remainder of their gifts. I was starting to feel like a Christmas failure because of the meagre offering,  and having spent the whole morning going up and down a learner slope tumblingly teaching myself how to ski – having broken my nose on a dry slope 15 years ago – I was als but I digress.

Jonah likes technology, so despite my own misgivings about him playing Super Mario ad nauseum, I have learned that with him, it’s better to let him do what he likes – he most often self-regulates if you give him a free rein.

But after a few days ignoring the circuit board while an SD card got delivered, and having flicked through the manual myself, getting stuck at the different types of ports, imputs and leads, I was starting to wonder whether it would be one of those gifts – like the kid’s electric guitar we picked up on sale for his 5th – that would just gather dust having been barely picked up.

But after some badgering from me, Tom got it connected to our telly – which is now the Pii’s monitor –  and after scrolling through white code on a black screen for a minute or two (an experience which brought back trying and failing to use my mum’s old Amstraad –  which may have kickstarted my own fear of technology – the screen turned from geek speak to a consumer friendly raspberry icon on the screen, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I tried to act interested as Tom explained to Jonah the various inputs, outputs and whatsits, but I didn’t get very far with it, and I was beginning to think Jonah was losing interest, until they turned on the Scratch programme, and that’s when it all fell into place.

I’m going to explain this in layman’s terms as that’s all I can do, but Scratch is a programme which teaches children the rudiments of computer programing by enabling the user to get a cat to do stuff using basic programming language. The logic it of it clearly appealed to Jonah, as he got the cat to speak in speech bubbles, walk across the screen and talk to a bowl of what appeared to be Cheesy Whotsits.

Ava, who is four, sustained concentration in the animation for long enough – anything Jonah is interested in will capture her for a little while, but she didn’t pretend to be interested in the how – but then she is four.

Anyway, Tom and Jonah stuck at it for a number of hours, until way after bedtime, by which time Ava was hopping around with lack of attention, This morning Jonah has expressed an interest in booting it up again – but, what with my lack of patience the first time round, I won’t be able to help, but I’m intending on getting Jonah to explain it to me later – he likes teaching. And with Tom having a lie in, it will have to wait until after the swimming that Tom has promised Ava – she hardly gets any activities of her own now I’m juggling three childminders and an 8.30-6.00 job – while I get my quarterly quarter head of highlights. Those greys are sticking up with more frequency every day…