BBC gifts a million minicomputers to UK secondary school children

[HEXUS]

The 'Micro Bit' devices are Raspberry Pi-style mini system board computers.

Read more.

[sykobee]

I wonder what the MCU is - it looks like an Atmel of some sort, presumably with an ARM inside given their involvement - except they don't have a 44-pin product AFAICT.

[Tabbykatze]

I wish I had this in secondary school rather than learning how to do a bloody mail merge in Word.

[smilertoo]

Didn't the BBC spend the last few years pleading poverty?

[Cr@ig]

There's a line in the sand, and that post crossed it. Keep it family friendly please.

[gagaga]

Didn't the BBC spend the last few years pleading poverty?

Oh course, like all public sector bodies. They all still manage to engage in these pissing contests, however. Pity it's always my money they do it with.

[abaxas]

In the 70s/80s the BBC gave children Jimmy Saville, now they get free computers.

How the world has changed.

[Peter Parker]

Didn't the BBC spend the last few years pleading poverty?

I don't believe the BBC is funding it directly themselves. From the article :

The BBC is working with a number of partners including ARM, Microsoft, Google and Samsung on the device and hopes to launch it in September.

[Jonj1611]

I wish I had this in secondary school rather than learning how to do a bloody mail merge in Word.

You had Word? Man we had typewriters!

[peterb]

This isn't a first for the BBC, a few people here will remember the BBC micro from the 1980s. It was based on the 6502 processor, and sold over 1.5 million units.

[Jonj1611]

We had the BBC Micro in our school, then came the Archimedes but the Micro was great, using the LOGO turtle, ah memories

[Flibb]

We had the BBC Micro in our school, then came the Archimedes but the Micro was great, using the LOGO turtle, ah memories

That's what most of us will remember of the BBC micro, not that ARM is a result of the BBCs investment.

[Breadcrust]

I wish I had this in secondary school rather than learning how to do a bloody mail merge in Word.

I concur, I am sat writing this comment in the library at my school. Don't believe their bull****. They show us all working on iPad and Raspberry Pi's (Not that I would want to work on an iPad) and it's all propaganda. We don't get what they show on the news, that's a one time thing just for the video. The Computer Science department at my school which I study in has a room full of Pi's but we can't use them because we don't have HDMI monitors. I have heard from my CS teacher Year 7s are now learning to code, they're using "Kodu Game Lab" and "Scratch". We spend the first year learning Python and this helped us. Giving them a tiny PC that is powered on a cut down version of Debian is not going to help them learn to code they have no interest in coding. It'll go in the bin or in a box and they'll never use it again. If they want to get kids into programming they need to give these things to Computer Science students who have proved their interest in the subject, not just chucking them out with the hope one might land in the palm of a revolutionary programmer.

[Dooms]

The Computer Science department at my school which I study in has a room full of Pi's but we can't use them because we don't have HDMI monitors.

Exact same situation at 2 of the schools my other half looked around last week. Lots of Pi's sitting in boxes because they don't have screens for them.