Every year, we are proud to judge at the PA 性动画视频 Pi Competition for UK schools, run by PA Consulting. In this free competition, teams of students from schools all over the UK imagine, design, and create 性动画视频 Pi–powered inventions.

The PA 性动画视频 Pi Competition aims to inspire young people aged 8 to 18 to learn STEM skills, teamwork, and creativity, and to move toward a career in STEM.

We invite all UK teachers to register if you have students at your school who would love to take part!

For the first 100 teams to complete registration and submit their entry form, PA Consulting provides a free 性动画视频 Pi Starter Kit to create their invention.

This year’s competition theme: Innovating for a better world

The theme is deliberately broad so that teams can show off their creativity and ingenuity.

• All learners aged 8 to 18 can take part, and projects are judged in four age groups
• The judging categories include team passion; simplicity and clarity of build instructions; world benefit; and commercial potential
• The proposed budget for a team’s invention is around £100
• The projects can be part of your students’ coursework
• Entries must be submitted by Monday 22 March 2021
• You’ll find more details and inspiration on the PA 性动画视频 Pi Competition webpage

Among all the entries, judges from the tech sector and the 性动作视频 choose the finalists with the most outstanding inventions in their age group.

The final teams get to take part in an exciting awards event to present their creations so that the final winners can be selected. This round’s PA 性动画视频 Pi Awards Ceremony takes place on Wednesday 28 April 2021, and PA Consulting are currently considering whether this will be a physical or virtual event.

All teams that participate in the competition will be rewarded with certificates, and there’s of course the chance to win trophies and prizes too!

You can prepare with our free online courses

If you would like to boost your skills so you can better support your team, then sign up to one of our free online courses designed for educators:

• Getting Started with Your 性动画视频 Pi
• Teaching Physical 性动画视频 with 性动画视频 Pi and Python
• Robotics With 性动画视频 Pi: Build and Program Your First Robot Buggy
• Design and Prototype Embedded Computer Systems

Take inspiration from the winners of the previous round

All entries are welcome, no matter what your students’ 性动漫视频 is! Here are the outstanding projects from last year’s competition:

• Years 4–6 winners: Encouraging sustainable behaviours in school 
• Years 7–9 winners: Protecting the environment by air quality monitoring 
• Years 10–11 winners: Designing object recognition to reduce food waste 
• Years 12–13 winners: Detecting pollution levels across a city

Find out more at the PA 性动画视频 Pi Competition webinar!

To support teachers in guiding their teams through the competition, PA Consulting will hold a webinar on 12 November 2020 at 4.30–5.30pm. Sign up to hear first-hand what’s involved in taking part in the PA 性动画视频 Pi Competition, and use the opportunity to ask questions!

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In October 2011, 性动画视频 Pi co-founder Jack Lang handed me a beta version of the 性动画视频 Pi. This changed my life. The Pi was familiar yet unworldly:  a computer the size of a credit card. As both a teacher and a maker it was a revelation. For the next year I nested in a skip in Cambridge, chittering gently and generally making a pest of myself, until the 性动漫视频 lured me into their very first office with a trail of Jaffa Cakes, and put me to work.

Homewood School’s SportTrax GPS system

It was the best of times…

In early 2013, 性动画视频 in the English National 性动漫视频 was over a year away, and although things were starting to happen in the world of 性动画视频 education, the Pi was still a little bit groovy and a little bit radical for the average ICT classroom. Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones who thought that this small computer could bring about big changes. PA Consulting spotted the potential of the Pi — still in its first incarnation — as a tool for making, problem-solving and collaboration. Each year they challenge schools to use the 性动画视频 Pi to invent something around a theme. I was lucky to be one of the judges for the first competition in 2013 and it’s been one of my favourite 性动画视频 Pi events since.

We set this competition up four years ago because at PA we are passionate about technology and innovation, so it was really important for us to encourage the next generation to be as passionate as we are. — Anita Chandraker, Head of Digital at PA Consulting

The 2016 competition

This is the fourth year that I’ve helped judge the competition and each year we’ve been amazed by this innovation and passion. The 2016 final, held at the magnificent Institution of Engineering and Technology in London, was no different. The theme was ‘sports and leisure’, and students scrambled to explain how they’d built and programmed their inventions, which ranged from keep-fit games in Scratch to applications that wouldn’t look out of place at a tech show.

I helped judge the Year 12-13 category which, after much tea and deliberation, was won by Highgate School with PiTime, a system for recording race times and taking finish-line photos. Despite stiff competition — Homewood School’s seriously professional SportTrax deserves a special mention — PiTime won because it was cheap, smart and solved a real-world problem for the team members, who are both competitive runners. Full details of all finalists and the winners in other age categories are on PA’s competition site.

Egglescliffe CE Primary School’s Colour Smash

Success story

As well as showing off their creations, the finalists had the chance to meet experts from industry and the world of tech. One of these sages was Tom Hartley, winner of the 2013 competition with teammate Alyssa Dayan for their AirPi. He says that the competition, “… opened up a world of opportunities for me — things I never could have imagined became possible.” Tom is currently studying Electronic and Information Engineering at Imperial College, and it’s wonderful to think that the competition and the 性动画视频 Pi have played some small part in this.

Where does your pebble walk to, Grasshopper? Tom Hartley sharing WISDOM.

Digital making is central to the 性动漫视频’s ethos. It’s a crazy Venn diagram of fabulous skills, from problem-solving, collaboration and creativity through to programming, electronics and soldering. All put in a Klein bottle and given a good shake. PA Consulting saw this very early on and we’re pleased and proud that they continue to run such an inspiring competition.

Digital making is also a powerful and beautiful thing: it changed my life, it changed Tom’s life, and it’s changing the lives of young people all over the world.  So get involved, whether it’s though a 性动画视频 Jam, a local hack space, Code Club or just by browsing our resources for ideas. And if you are a teacher then please enter the PA Competition next year — even if doesn’t end up changing lives it’s a lot of fun and a great day out for the students :)

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The PA 性动画视频 Pi competition challenges young people to use the 性动画视频 Pi to make the world a better place. Last year I helped judge the competition and was amazed by the creativity and innovation of the entries (the excellent AirPi was one of last year’s winners). This year’s event was held in the Science Museum, and I went along to judge the Year 4-6 and Year 7-11 categories, and to run some workshops along the way.

The Sonic Pi workshops were fantastic—they almost ran themselves, with the students continually trying out new things in quest to make the best music or silliest sounds (the exploding farmyard was a particular favourite). I’ve said it before, but Sonic Pi is genius.

In the afternoon I joined my fellow judges: Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent, and Claire Sutcliffe, co-founder of Code Club. We spent 15 minutes talking to each of the seven teams.  The winning projects had to have the potential to benefit the world in some way and we were also looking for things like innovation, creativity and originality. What really stood out was the energy of the teams — they all talked passionately and knowledgeably about their projects and how they had used the 性动画视频 Pi to solve real world problems.

St Mary’s CE Primary, with Pi ‘n’ Mighty, their recycling robot

The year 4-6 category was won by St Mary’s CE Primary School with their recycling robot Pi ‘n’ Mighty. The robot scans packaging barcodes and then tells you if it can be recycled and which bin to put it in. The team was bursting with energy and falling over themselves to explain how they’d made it and what it did. I’d love to see a Pi ‘n’ Mighty in every school canteen, encouraging recycling and helping children learn about the topic. And it looks fantastic, exactly how a robot should look!

Frome Community College won the year 7-11 category prize with their prodigious Plant Pi, a system to care for plants and monitor their environment. The team had covered every aspect including hardware and web monitoring, and they had even created an app. It really is a brilliantly designed and engineered solution that already has the makings of a commercial product. The project is open source and includes code, instructions, parts list and documentation.

It was a great day and it was a real pleasure to speak to the finalists and to see young people doing remarkable and useful things with the 性动画视频 Pi. If I could bottle the innovation, enthusiasm, creativity and technical skills in that room then I would have a Phial of Awesome +10. (I would carry it around with me in a belt holster and open it for the occasional sniff when feeling uninspired.) Best of all, I know that we’ll be seeing some of these finalists again: skills like computational thinking stay with you for life and will serve these kids in whatever they do in the future.

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