Kho Teck Wan wonders about MP Kuching queries on Raspberry Pi

suppadmin | November 27, 2020

SUPP Central Woman Chief, Kho Teck Wan wonders about Bandar Kuching MP, Dr Kelvin Yii queries on his series of statements regarding Sarawak Government’s decision to purchase Raspberry Pi to assist primary school students in their virtual learning experience.

“According to Dr. Yii, the Raspberry Pi runs on Raspbian Operating Systems (OS), which is a flavour of Linux OS that is complicated for teacher and most Windows or Mac users. Unless someone is in technical support line, why would anyone care to know how complicated the Raspbian OS is? “, she asked.

Most of us, she stated, don’t know how the car engine works, and don’t know how to repair a car, but can still drive the car. Likewise most Samsung phone users don’t know how complicated the Android OS works on their phone. They just need to know how to use the phone.

She blamed Dr Yii for trying to mislead the general public with his overly concern statement or he doesn’t even know what he is talking about.

He, she said need not worry the Sarawakians with how complicated the Raspbian OS is, because most students will only need to know how to use the computer.

Dr Yii also expressed his concern that the Raspberry Pi 4 is not a full fledge Windows or Mac computer. And our students should learn the Microsoft Office tools.

Kho wondered what is the rational behind choosing only Windows or Mac computer and learning Microsoft Office specifically.

Sarawak government, she stated, is purchasing the Raspberry Pi to assist students in their virtual learning. The Minister of Education never stated that our students will no longer learn Windows or Microsoft Office after only a few addition of Raspberry Pi computers.

The Raspberry Pi is designed originally for young children who is interested in creating website. The beauty of Raspberry Pi lies in its low cost and wide selection of open source fun projects that can be downloaded such as creating a website, games, robots, and 3D printing projects for children. Pi4 will add fun to the learning of science and technology.

So in my humble opinion, in order to prepare our future generation for the ever changing digital world, we should encourage our children to explore all the new tools and acquire new skills instead of limiting them to learn the tool that is considered ‘popular choice’ of today.

Kho reckoned that any IT gadget will cost more after shipping, hardware Maintenance, warranty, training, and software support are included in the purchase.

She added that Dr Yii is not an expert and may not have any experience deploying technology solution in urban or rural area.

Like our modern day mobile phones, she said, users can freely choose to use Samsung, iPhone, OPPO, Huawei, and etc. Most devices are sufficient to perform the job required.

“Our resources and energy should not be focusing on the argument of what device to use, but the STEM syllabus that is effective in encouraging the learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I would like to see is how our STEM teachers can fully utilise the flexibility of Pi4 to create fun computer programs and projects for our primary school children”, she said.