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.

Comments

Re:Internet of Things

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...
  The BBC here in the UK is NOT, repeat NOt funded by the Government. It is funded by the people through the TV license. The money goes nowhere near the government. The current license is approx £144/year per household.

The ONLY bit of the BBC that is Government funded is the World Service.

Please get your facts right.

Re:Microsoft Education

[hughbar]

Yes, exactly. I've worked on/off as a BBC contractor and watched the top of BBC technology swing from open-source(-ish) to Microsoft, in the time of Ashley Highfield and especially Eric Huggers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ent....

I agree with the Guardian commentator here: http://www.theguardian.com/tec..., that calls the initiative 'hugely dickish':

This is a hugely dickish move by the BBC. The Pi is already solidly and explicitly established as the reincarnation of the ideas behind the BBC Micro, and the BBC should have just got on board and supported it. While there's a case to be made that a tiny embedded board like this doesn't compete with a Pi in hardware terms, it does compete with it for class time, attention and support.

Like most older Brits, I have a lot of affection for the BBC, but in the last 10 - 15 years, it has lost its way both for technology and TV output.