Is anyone aware of a way to cheaply purchase multiple Raspberry Pi Zero W's? They are sold at $10 but are limited to 1 per person. If you want to buy more, the price is around $20 each. That's a big price difference if you are buying 30 out of pocket to teach a class.
If you're going to teach a class, I'd recommend going out of your way to give each student a Pi 3 Model B+. The additional ports means that the device can be useful as a general-purpose computer outside of class (just hook up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor/TV).
I realize the difference between $300 and $1050 is a lot, but you get way more hardware at the $35 price point. Building the institutional muscle to figure out how to get the additional $650 in funding is a good skill set as a teacher. (If you're at a school, there might be special funds set aside for buying STEM equipment you can tap into. You might also be able to get some money through the charity arms of local companies, or out of a local bank's petty cash fund. If you're teaching students at the middle-school or high-school age, you can ask them to help with the fundraising process. If you're teaching adults, just charge each adult a fee to cover the hardware cost.)
> just charge each adult a fee to cover the hardware cost
That seems a quick way to discourage adults from taking programming courses. Should they pay for a chair and table too? Or a screen? Of course not, that cost is amortised across many classes.
It's ridiculous that the Foundation makes bulk purchasing so difficult when the original vision for the RPi was for education. But that was fairly quickly forgotten when it became the darling of hackerspaces and upselling became the priority.
