The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a history with computers. In the 1980s, they helped produce and distribute to schools, for the use of school children, one of the first micro-computers of the day, the BBC Micro. This week, the BBC announced a new initiative, Make it Digital [1], and a new piece of hardware, the Micro Bit (Figure 1), which they and their partners want to distribute to all seventh graders (11-12 years old) in the United Kingdom next September.

Although there is not a lot of solid information about the Micro Bit, the prototype for it is very small, has an array (5x5) of LEDs, Bluetooth low energy (LE), and various items like an accelerometer, taking its power from a micro USB port. It is advertised as being "wearable" and appears to be more along the lines of an Arduino type of processor, able to run one program at a time, than a computer that could run multiple programs at one time.

The bigger message is not just another small board that students can use to build things, but the "full court press" that the BBC is putting behind the Make it Digital program to try and address the 1.4 million digital professionals that will be needed in the UK over the next five years. More than 25 companies and associations (with indications that might expand to 50) are in the program. The BBC sees a shortage of trained IT people in the UK and, rather than try to import them from other countries, decided to improve the computer skills of students in the seventh grade through the Micro Bit program and in other grades through other programs.

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