KUCHING: The Sarawak government through the Ministry of Education, Innovation and Talent Development (MEITD) will supply more units of Raspberry Pi devices to primary schools.
Its Minister Datuk Roland Sagah said his ministry is working on a mechanism to provide the additional units.
“Since 2021, the ministry has provided over 9,000 units of Raspberry Pi sets, including monitors, keyboards, and mouses to primary schools all over Sarawak.
“Therefore, we will work on it to increase the (supply of the Raspberry Pi devices) and upgrade those that are necessary,” he said.
Roland said this to reporters during a press conference on the STEM Trailblazers — Powered by Pi Event at Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus (Swinburne Sarawak) here today.
The Raspberry Pi is a low-cost, credit-card-sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor. It enables students to explore computing and to learn how to programme in languages like Scratch and Python.
Roland added that despite the Raspberry Pi devices being a state programme, he hoped the federal government would give its support.
“All this while we have been depending on state funding. We hope the federal government could assist us, but again, this (provision of the Raspberry Pi device) is an initiative by the Sarawak government,” he added.
Earlier, in his speech, the minister said his ministry began with a vision to help accelerate innovation and digital skills among young children through the use of Raspberry Pi.
“This is in line with our objective of promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and ICT education to students in Sarawak,” he said.
Roland said that in 2022 MEITD also began rolling out training sessions on the application of Raspberry Pi to teachers across Sarawak.
“This includes delivering training in higher education institution partners like Swinburne, the University of Technology Sarawak (UTS), Curtin University Malaysia, Sarawak, Riam Institute of Technology as well as to rural schools and Education District Offices (PPDs).
“To date, we have trained over 1,300 teachers, PPD staff, and school computer technicians, fulfilling our promise of training at least 1,265 teachers in 2022,” he said.
Roland said the training will be offered to teachers from this year.
