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One Million School Children To Get Free BBC Micro:bit Computers
Mickeycaskill writes with this news from TechWeek Europe: Every Year 7 student in England and Wales, Year 8 student in Northern Ireland and S1 student in Scotland will be handed, for free, a BBC micro:bit computer specially designed to help pupils learn to code. Micro:bits, which are smaller than the size of a credit card and can be hooked up to a mobile app or accessed via the Internet, will be delivered nationwide through schools and made available to home-schooled students over the course of the next few weeks. The students are able to keep their devices as their own, meaning they can work with the device for homework, in school holidays, and use it for more applications as their grasp on coding increases. The initiative follows on from the BBC's Micro programme that was introduced in the 1980s, and sees a partnership between the BBC and some of the world's most notable technology companies such as ARM, Microsoft, and Samsung. The computer will hope to emulate the Raspberry Pi, of which more than eight million have been sold. A BBC story explains a bit about the project's ambitions, and points out a few "bumps in the road"; originally, the hardware was to be in classrooms several months sooner. The BBC's own micro:bit page features more on programming the device, as well as many sample projects.
The micro:bit designed to try and keep the Raspberry Pi out of UK schools. See also how Microsoft acted to sabatage the OLPC initiative. ref .. brand new millennium, same old MICROS~1 :)
From the summary - "will be handed, for free, a BBC micro:bit computer " and "The computer will hope to emulate the Raspberry Pi". Does that help?
It means in success and adoption, rather than performance. Its not a competitor to the Pi, its aimed even more at the educational market and has been deliberately designed in such a way that there is little prospect of a secondary market (so they dont get sold off on ebay).
It's a microcontroller, not a computer.
I don't understand why you're trying to compare them.
Because the creators compared them! And they came to the wrong conclusion, that there was a purpose for what they were making. But there isn't. What is really wanted is more Pi Zeros. You can use them for the same stuff as the Micro:bit, but you don't need a host system for development. You can use them with one if you've got one, so you're not giving up anything, and you get dramatically more for your money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"