The MagPi caught up with Cat Lamin after her recent success at the Wimbledon Raspberry Jam to find out why she loves the Raspberry Pi andRaspberry Jams.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 48 and was written by Ben Nuttall.

How did you get involved with the Raspberry Pi community?

“As a teacher, various people mentioned Raspberry Pi to me, including one of the technicians in school, but I wasn’t brave enough to get one. Eventually, the school bought me four to use with my Code Club and I sat them on a shelf admiring them, but didn’t really know where to start until I went to Picademy and had some training in how to use one! My biggest problem was understanding how to set up the Pi and what to do if something went wrong. I’m now an expert in debugging basic user errors; you’d be amazed at how many parents tell me that their Raspberry Pi isn’t working until I ask them to check the SD card is fully pushed in.

“I went to Picademy in July 2014. While there, people were adding me on Twitter and Google+ and were chatting to me about projects and ideas. I got really excited about the teaching possibilities of Pi, but was very aware of my own limitations. So I started a blog to keep track of my many errors, and to let other teachers know what they could do in their classroom. I then came up with the idea of Coding Evenings as a way to further allow sharing between teachers and community members, which meant that lots of amazing community people got involved.”

What was your first Raspberry Jam?

“I think the first actual Jam I attended was the third birthday party in Cambridge, when I accidentally volunteered to help out as a Jam maker, with no idea what I was letting myself in for. I went to Egham Jam when Albert Hickey asked Carrie Anne Philbin to put out a plea for a teacher to head over and do a talk about Picademy and using Pi in school. I’ve been to CamJam, Egham Jam, Peterborough Jam, and the 4th birthday party, before organising my own Jam in Wimbledon with help from Albert Hickey.”

How did organising that first Jam come about?

“Albert, who organises the Egham Jam, approached me to see if I was interested in helping him run the Jam in Wimbledon; he had been offered a venue and wanted me to be involved from the start. Wimbledon is close to the school I teach in, and I knew this would be an excellent opportunity to give some of the children from school the opportunity to help develop their passions outside of school. What I really enjoyed about the Jam was seeing all of the families there, and several parents asked if we could let their children’s school know about the next one because they were keen to bring more families down!

“I was really lucky with Wimbledon Jam as so many people offered their help almost straight away, and it was great having Ben [Nuttall] along as a representative from the Raspberry Pi Foundation: it added a sort of official stamp of approval to the day.”

What’s your favourite thing about a Raspberry Jam?

“I really like having workshops, talks, and show-and-tells going on and we were really lucky that loads of people were interested in doing everything. Our talks ranged from getting girls to code, to teaching, to using RPi as a print server, and people seemed to enjoy the content. Workshops included Crumble Bot, CEEDuniverse and micro:bit, as well as Minecraft and Sense HAT. The workshops had varying numbers of signups, but all of them ended up being full because all of the children who attended were really keen to get involved and try things out. For show-and-tell we had Brian Corteil’s Micro PiNoon, Carl Monk’s Whack-A-Pi, and then Albert’s Pi-controlled crane. The children (and adults) had so much fun playing with the games, especially as Redfern and 4Tronix kindly donated prizes for some of them! One of my highlights from the day was watching the mums creep over to Whack-A-Pi and sneak a go while their children were taking part in workshops: it was very funny!

“We had 80 people sign up to the Jam and around 60 turned up, including some ‘walk ins’. Twelve of the children attending the Jam were from my own school and there were probably another twelve who came with their parents.”