{"id":332,"date":"2014-06-11T13:48:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T13:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biooutreach\/?p=332"},"modified":"2014-06-11T13:48:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T13:48:46","slug":"kilgraston-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/2014\/06\/11\/kilgraston-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Kilgraston Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Raspberry-Pi-logo\"<\/a>University of St Andrews staff visited Kilgraston<\/a> school, at Bridge of Earn in Perthsire on Friday June 6th to help an enthusiastic group of S5\/S6 pupils begin to explore the mysteries of computational biology.<\/p>\n

Dr Daniel Barker<\/a>\u00a0and Dr\u00a0Heleen Plaisier<\/a>\u00a0of the University of St Andrews\u2019 School of Biology brought 9 Raspberry Pi<\/a>\u00a0computers loaded with \u201c4273pi<\/a>\u201d, a customised version of the Linux operating system developed for teaching and learning computational biology<\/a>
\nat the University of St Andrews.<\/p>\n

Pupils were guided through practical examples to gain hands-on\u00a0experience of research-grade computing applied to biological problems.\u00a0One\u00a0pupil remarked : \u201cI liked the programming – making files and commands – because it was really interesting to see how computers actually work\u201d.<\/p>\n

Working along with Kilgraston staff – Dr Muriel Comrie and Mr Gavin\u00a0Muirhead – in the morning researchers showed pupils how to use the Linux operating system, work with the Perl computing language, and run BLAST software on the Raspberry Pi.<\/p>\n

\"RaspberryPi1\"<\/a>In the afternoon, pupils learned about discovering where genes\u00a0actually are, within genome sequences – using a case-study based on\u00a0real research happening at the University of St Andrews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cComparing gene sequences in different species [was] very\u00a0interesting and it was good to see the computer program working in a\u00a0practical and genuine situation. I also enjoyed the problem solving aspect\u201d, commented one sixth former.<\/p>\n

This was the first 4273pi school outreach event. Researchers were delighted with\u00a0the enthusiasm of pupils and their ability to grasp new computing approaches to problem solving and pick up important biological concepts along the way.<\/p>\n

Pupils and staff both enjoyed getting involved with real computing problems. ICT Manager Gavin Muirhead was pleased to watch: \u201c\u2026pupils who had never written code program Pis, then seeing their excitement when the code worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The activity allowed the 4273pi project team to test teaching material in a school for the first time. All the pupils involved intend to go to university, where they will\u00a0certainly benefit from this early grounding in practical scientific computing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of St Andrews staff visited Kilgraston school, at Bridge of Earn in Perthsire on Friday June 6th to help an enthusiastic group of S5\/S6 pupils begin to explore the mysteries of computational biology. Dr Daniel Barker\u00a0and Dr\u00a0Heleen Plaisier\u00a0of the University of St Andrews\u2019 School of Biology brought 9 Raspberry Pi\u00a0computers loaded with \u201c4273pi\u201d, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public","category-research","category-schools"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2014\/06\/Raspberry-Pi-logo.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}