The new Raspberry Pi 3B+ is a wonderful system for learning Python 3 programming as well as to build some simple projects that make use of GPIO pins. At $35 it is affordable, and has good features. The WiFi is so reliable, compared to the earlier models, that we can easily configure the Pi as a VNC Server running headless and being controlled from my laptop.
As part of set of systems for demonstrating the GPIO and Python libraries to connect to that, I needed VNC setup. By mistake, I installed tightvncserver first. It worked, but when I realized that the default raspi-config uses Real-VNC-Server, I quickly changed and setup real-vnc-server. There was a bit of issue regarding screen resolution, as I did not want an HDMI monitor connected to the Pi. Finally I agreed to the default Display resolution.
Next of key importance was ability to run Jupyter notebook using Python3. The default version I had was Python 3.5.3, but when I installed Jupyter and run any script, it could not display the output. Since many others had reported similar problems, I decided to update Python 3 to current 3.7.2 version. Practically, dropped X11 completely and reinstalled Python 3.7.2 and reinstalled raspberri-ui-mods, xinit, xutils and chromium-browser. Now I installed Jupyter again, and this time it worked fine. I am happy with my simple clean Desktop with Chromium Browser and Python 3.7.2.
Now I plan to test the various GPIO libraries and test some simple experiments to measure temperature, humidity etc. This should be elegant for a simple Python3 workshop using Raspberry Pi 3.
When I compare other single board systems like Radxa Rock Pro and Odroid etc, I am finding the Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a better solution for school students as a learning platform.
skylabin 
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