'Make it Digital' campaign and Micro Bit hardware launch position BBC as 'megaphone' for UK tech skills deficit

Micro Bit mini computer also launched as Beeb attempts to fill 5,000 national tech jobs

The BBC has launched a national IT literacy campaign called "Make it Digital", along with a new micro-computer called the Micro Bit, in a scheme Google MD Eileen Naughton described as "using the megaphone of the BBC" to "open doors" for "tremendous job creation".

Director-general of the BBC Tony Hall announced that the broadcaster, in partnership with 50 organisations that include Google, Microsoft, ARM, Samsung, BT and Tech City, intends to "bring the wonders of technology" to its audience by way of content and events running throughout 2015.

"More than anything else, this is about working with others," said Hall, "and we know that working with each other we can create something magical."

Hall, joking that "almost all of [ARM's] board learned to programme on a BBC Micro", announced "more than 30 digital education events", as well as coding "festivals", mentoring schemes and digital traineeships, all showcased on a new BBC website.

The scheme will harness a range of BBC brands, including Radio 1, Eastenders, Doctor Who and Children in Need to promote IT skills, he said.

Meanwhile, Hall said the BBC traineeships announced last week will "give up to 5,000 young people a life-changing opportunity" to find work within the digital economy.

Hall said the Micro Bit, a system on a chip about half the size of the Raspberry Pi, would introduce children to wearable technology and the Internet of Things. The device will be given out to one million children this autumn.

Microsoft UK MD Michel van der Bel said: "Children can code on the computer, then download it to this device, then show a result out of it.

"It will be a device you can wear, it will say ‘Hey this is me, today I don't want to be bothered', or ‘Life is great' - all kinds of things. It will also play in the social field of sharing things with each other."

Van der Bel said Microsoft is planning on giving away a million Micro Bits to students.

Computing asked Van der Bel how Microsoft is supporting the BBC campaign.

"What's been announced is an umbrella initiative, really elevating it to the nation if you will, with the BBC making people excited about it."

"We can contribute by making new things - like the Micro Bit - or leveraging things we already have. I think things are pretty lined up - we're using it to leverage some of our own programmes too."

Referring to the BBC Micro and its success as an educational device back in the 1980s, Van der Bel said, "Don't underestimate the impact of the BBC.

"We need to get a grassroots momentum to inspire. The BBC is announcing - I don't want to say just a programme - but a new wave of innovation."

Ian Livingstone CBE, adviser on Make it Digital, IT skills champion and co-author of Nesta's Next Gen report, which is credited with informing the government's recent changes to the IT curriculum, added:

"I think it's great to see the BBC publicly backing IT with these initiatives, and it's making more people who wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with digital more aware of it."

But Livingstone acknowledged that there are still many IT teachers who lack the skills to teach coding to the level the curriculum requires.

He suggested, however, that this shouldn't been seen as a major problem.

"It isn't a problem. It's more a case that we can't afford not to do this," Livingstone told Computing.

"We have to find a way, and I'd say that if some IT teachers aren't able to do it, they should just accept that, but not kick it into the long grass. They should start a code club, be a facilitator and let whatever child is the brightest lead the group, and learn together.

"In this world of collaboration I hope we're moving toward, we don't need to keep those traditional barriers there anymore."

Livingstone said one of his main aims as an adviser to the campaign was to ensure it is focused on "creativity" rather than "dull greybeards writing code for financial accounting packages".

Another priority for Livingstone is to encourage employers to look first for homegrown digital talent rather than recruit from outside the UK.

"So many IT companies now cannot find the talent here, so they're going overseas," he said.

"I spoke at a Southern Tech 100 dinner a few nights ago, and there was a recruitment agency there who said they spend the bulk of their time in Romania and Hungary to find recruits for the businesses they're serving," said Livingstone.

"If we have so many people unemployed in this country and are naturally good at technology, surely we should give them the right skills so the jobs can be done here, by UK people."

Neel Mistry, director at IT training firm and Make it Digital partner General Assembly, stressed that the BBC will also need to emphasise more than just coding if it wishes to successfully tackle the UK's skills deficit.

"We work with 300 employers, and they come to us for management, data science, visual and user experience design. We run programmes to address them all," he told Computing.

"What the BBC is doing is about inspiration more than anything else - it's not the BBC becoming a school, but about getting people thinking about digital as a skill or a hobby, like sport or cooking."

Mistry argued that while coding is now seen to be "mainstream and sexy", other disciplines like data science are also critical and do not require programming skills.

"Data science is also critical, and it's difficult to get into and niche. People who get hired for it are usually PhD physicists, so it's not important to have core IT skills," he said.