BBC eyes worldwide expansion for tiny educational computer
A new educational foundation hopes to introduce children worldwide to coding, using a tiny single-board computer that has changed the way coding is taught in schools.
The micro:bit is developed for the BBC, which has distributed 1 million of them to schools in the UK.
Where the similar Raspberry Pi resembles a low-powered, low-priced PC, the micro:bit is more like an embedded computer, encouraging children to develop their own takes on the Internet of Things.
The micro:bit has already found favour in Iceland, Norway, Singapore, and the US, and now the BBC and its partners in the project have created the Micro:bit Educational Foundation to promote its use in other countries.
The BBC’s head of learning Sinead Rocks said the broadcaster would continue to support micro:bit users in the UK, but the independent foundation “will also work to enthuse and support young people on a global scale as well.”.
The foundation will also have support from ARM, Microsoft, Nominet, Samsung Electronics, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
For ARM, at least, the story has come full circle. The company was spun out of Acorn Computers, which created the microcomputer used in the BBC’s first educational computing initiative, in 1982. After developing several generations of the BBC Microcomputer, Acorn began designing its own processor, then known as the Acorn RISC Machine.
Now a distant relative of that processor, the 32-bit ARM Cortex M0, powers the micro:bit. It runs at 16MHz, stores code in 16 kilobytes of RAM, and communicates via a micro-USB port, a Bluetooth Low Energy module, and three input-output ports that can carry analog or digital signals.
The original BBC Micro, in contrast, had an 8-bit Motorola 6502 processor, 16 or 32Kb RAM, an analog input, and network, video, audio, and printer ports. Its 32Kb ROM contained a BASIC interpreter, and external storage was on audio cassette tape.
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