The Power of the Game for Pretend Doctors

I work as a Clinical Engineer, a part of that role is in providing technical support for electrically powered medical equipment and devices. One area in which I work is in an Eye Clinic.

When we work in specific technology areas, as Clinical Engineers we are often very involved with instruments that are not perhaps electronic and that do not fit strictly into the realm of clinical engineering. We often find ourselves in discussions with clinicians regarding problem-solving for particular tricky procedures. A deeper understanding of the clinical procedures may be useful.

In among the endless discussion of the merits of various video games, my 11-year old son described to me how to insert a pacemaker. It was really quite impressive. So I followed up, and I have just removed a cartoon cataract – using instruments I have often discussed but was not fully familiar with their function. My son advises me that I can also do laser surgery.

The game has just invited me to do heart surgery.

These games are free, they are simplistic but they offer a very valuable modern tool to Clinical Engineers, perhaps young people thinking about a career in healthcare, and anyone who might be having one of these procedures. I just googled: Eye Surgery Game to find games, and one leads to another.

These games obviously provide absolutely no medical training but they are great for helping you understand procedures which you or a friend or relative may need to undergo.

But they are also fun and represent another little light-hearted benefit the internet has brought us.

What’s a Raspberry Pi?

It’s not a Raspberry Pie!

It’s a little computer.  It is actually a very powerful computer and costs less that €50.

The idea is that you can connect it to your TV and if you have a keyboard that’s available for recycling, you can use that but you can buy the Raspberry Pi and all the basic bits for less than €100.

If you buy it as a kit, you get a little SD card (like a camera memory card) with all the software you need to work as a linux computer pre-loaded onto it.

It was developed by Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, based at Cambridge University’s Computer Lab.  They noticed that as time passed and more and more technology became available, prospective computing students knew less and less about real computing.

People like Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, and Sony developers had closed down software to amateur developers – they couldn’t get in to systems any more to do their own development and the rate of learning was slowing down as a result.

The Raspberry Pi was developed to be ultra-accessible to young people, it could be bought very cheaply, it could be enhanced with recycled parts, and it’s operating system (the language driving it), Python (a version of Linux) is open-source.  Open source sort of means developed by the people, for the people, and constantly improved by other people.

When you connect the Raspberry Pi to your TV and switch everything on, it brings you to a screen that looks like any other desktop picture (but with a big Raspberry in the middle) and you can select a browser (that’s for accessing the internet – so an alternative to Internet Explorer, Safari or Mozilla) and off you go, surfing the internet.

SCRATCH

There is also a little program there called “Scratch”.  “Scratch” is a very special piece of software.  It was developed at MIT, (and guess what: its free!), and it can be used at a very basic level to get to grips with programming – the only pre-requisite for being able to use “Scratch” is to be able to read.  So even if you are seventy (I know the 7 year olds know they can use “Scratch”), and you can read, you can begin to look into the world of computer programming with Scratch.  You can keep learning from Scratch and build your own computer games.

You don’t have to have a Raspberry Pi for Scratch, you can download it for any PC system, but it feels right on the Raspberry Pi because you are in a learning environment.

What can it do?

Back to the Raspberry Pi or Raspi as it is known to its friends.  What can it do?  Well you can connect things to it, I recently connected a little camera to it, which you can use as a still camera or a video camera controlled by writing code into the Raspberry Pi.  Now you are saying I have lost you, but hold on – if you can cut and paste – you too can do this.

A source of delight for me is the generosity of Raspi enthusiasts – they make the code available on the internet.  Just search for projects with the Raspberry Pi.  There are lots.  I managed to connect a Google Nexus tablet wirelessly to the Raspberry Pi – I barely knew what I was doing but I followed instructions from a GIt is designed to oogle search and it worked.

I have two Raspi projects in the pipeline: the first is to control a Robot arm bought from Maplin using a Nintendo Wii controller (they work by Bluetooth and you can connect a Bluetooth transmitter/receiver to the Raspi) and the second is to host this blog on the Pi.  The code and instructions for doing these and hundreds of other projects is available on the internet.

Love the Raspi

These are the things I love about the Raspberry Pi:

• It’s cheap;
• It looks simple and accessible – it demystifies big technology;
• It is designed to be inclusive;
• It is empowering;
• Thousands of people have made their Raspberry Pi code available to all free of charge on the internet.

Where did it get its name: the Pi bit is a combination of our old friend relating the circumference of a circle to its radius, and Python – the operating system; as for the “Raspberry” bit, well you have heard of “Apple”, so why not “Raspberry”.

If you have children, who just might be interested in computers or you have an interest yourself, get a Raspberry Pi, you and they might love it.

Too Old for the Coder Dojo?

I’m jealous of all the young people whoget to go to the Coder Dojo. You see, you have to either be aged 7 to 17 to go along. The only other option open to me is to make one of my children go so that I can accompany them, but they aren’t even vaguely interested and I am not the mother who will make it an imperative.

The Coder Dojo is a world I would have loved when I was growing up. It’s a world-wide network of technical learning possibilties. According to its website www.coderdojo.com :

CoderDojo is a global network of free, volunteer-led, independent, community based programming clubs for young people. These young people, between 7 and 17, learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and explore technology in an informal and creative environment. In addition to learning to code attendees meet like minded people and get to show off what they’ve been working on.

There is a focus on community, peer learning, youth mentoring and self led learning with an emphasis on openness, helping others and showing how coding is a force for change in the world. CoderDojo makes development and learning to code a fun, sociable, kick ass experience.

– See more at: https://coderdojo.com/about/#sthash.JD0NwPMQ.dpuf

In Ireland there are over 160 Coder Dojos, that is an incredible network. Japan has 19 Coder Dojos and the US has just over 100.

The Coder Dojo, is offering a brilliant opportunity to learn about programming, app and game development to young people. Learning about these things is amazingly empowering because it de-mystifies the technology and teaches about lots of freely available tools and wizards that make it almost easy to become an entrepreneur.

I know several teenagers and one young lady who isn’t even a teenager yet, who are entrepreneurs in their spare time. They develop their own apps and games and one young man has a nice little business going developing apps as a business in between bouts of homework.

 Lucky, lucky people.

 The Coder Dojo is also inspirational because the mentors are voluntary. Money does not exchange hands.

Recognising, that often girls are slow to embrace, or even be seen to embrace technology, some Coder Dojos have special sessions just for girls.  The Coder Dojo is a movement of our time, developing to genuinely offer advantage to our children.

Recently one of the mentors at my local Coder Dojo invited me to come along, even though I am ancient, so maybe I am not too old after all.