pi-top Radio pi-top

My guest for this episode is Amali de Alwis MBE, CEO of Code First: Girls, a programme that works with businesses and individuals to encourage more women in into a career in tech. Amali explains her love of making everything from electronic circuits and toy costumes as a child to strategies for blue chip companies in her career. As Amali says,  "the technology is just technology, it's just the tools. What we want to do is encourage people use their imagination to feel empowered and enabled, so if they see these problems if there are things they want to change, they have the skills and knowledge to do that."

This episode is features drones, parrot semen, and citizen science! New Zealand based scientist, Andrew Digby, works in conservation and uses drones, and several other technologies, to help save endangered native birds such as the Kakapo. These flightless birds have become endangered due to habitat loss and predation by non-native species, and there are only around 140 of these left in the wild. As Andrew explains, technology is key to their survival...

(image: Andrew Digby / New Zealand Department of Conservation)

If you’re a primary or elementary school teacher (or even high school), you probably do a bit of visual coding in your classrooms, and chances are you’re using the programming language Scratch.

So in this episode I’m in conversation with Karen Brennan, who works with the Scratch Education community. She tells us why making and coding are so important for students, and crucially, what support the education community can offer itself. 

Fran Scott is the co-judge on hit TV show, Legomasters. She's also the science content developer for the Royal Institution, so know s a thing or two about getting kids to explore science, technology and engineering. In this interview Fran tells us about her life and work, and why all kids love to build and make

Welcome to series 2 of We Make The Future, in this special episode we reveal our latest product, the all new pi-top [4], to Raspberry pi inventor Eben Upton. Eben and I also talk about the history of home computing, the future of education, and why all kids have problems they want to solve using technology. And remember, if you're doing something cool and would like to feature on the show, get in touch via twitter, we're @getPiTop

"We could be in the arctic, we could be in the desert, we could be on Mars" says Middle School teacher Chris Regini. He and his class have turned their school's maker space into a fully automated hydroponic system to better understand the food needs of the future.