There’s no shortage of really tiny computers out there these days, but I was still struck by just how tiny the BBC micro:bit is. Not that the Raspberry Pi or the Arduino are big by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to remind yourself of what a big computer looks like, see below (that’s the Colossus in case you don’t recognise it). Or you can just watch a vintage episode of the X-Files from the 90s.

We’ve come a long way since the Colossus was first built in Bletchley Park
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This new breed of computers is not only tiny, but also really, really affordable. The Arduino and BBC micro:bit retail for about £15, and you can get a Raspberry Pi for about a fiver. Best of all, they’re made to be so flexible and hackable that there’s an infinite variety of things you can do with them.

This new breed of computers is not only tiny, but also really, really affordable
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The kit I tested out was by Kitronik, one of the 29 organisations that partnered with the BBC to create the micro:bit. It is a little bit more technical and meatier than the fun-looking kits you get from Technology Will Save Us or Sphero but it is aimed at a slightly older age group, and I really enjoyed the fact that it combined coding with hands-on electronics, so that you’re learning the hardware and software aspects in tandem.

Kitronik is one of the 29 organisations that partnered with the BBC to create the micro:bit
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Every Kitronik kit comes with a teaching resource pack that guides students through how to build it, but also on the principles of what actually makes it work. The resources section of their website contains a range of tutorials, datasheets, project ideas and interactive teaching aids which further supports that learning.

Many teachers are now keen to incorporate subjects such as coding in the curriculum
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With the importance of digital skills being increasingly recognized, many teachers are now keen to incorporate subjects such as coding in the curriculum, but it’s not always straightforward for them to do so. Which is why, as we’re starting a new academic year, they’re launching a range of teaching resources to specifically support the delivery of STEM-based lessons using the BBC micro:bit.

“We are already seeing all manner of projects being created by students up and down the country and there is undoubted enthusiasm for the device as a tool to support coding and integrated projects. Judging by the number of orders we have received, there is little doubt that teachers are keen to further develop the use of this resource,” says Kitronik Director and Co-Founder Kevin Spurr.

We are already seeing all manner of electronics projects being created by students
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His Co-Founder Geoff Hampson is also excited about micro:bit’s potential for creating a cross-curricular platform for the teaching and learning of digital skills, and transform students from passive end users into creators of technology, developing their capabilities not only in coding, but in digital creativity.

Geoff and Kevin started the company in 2005 with a mission to make electronics accessible to everyone, and sold over a million kits since then, including their Electro-Fashion range which allows you to add lights to fabrics by sewing the components together with specially designed conductive thread, requiring no soldering. They also supply over 3,000 secondary schools directly.

We’ve come a long way since the Colossus was first built in Bletchley Park. Most of us carry around supercomputers (also known as smartphones) in our pockets, and Alan Turing would probably be amazed – and delighted – to see how a Raspberry Pi costing $5 can outperform most computers which cost small fortunes a mere few decades ago.

The more technology advances the easier it is to take it for granted
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But the more technology advances, perhaps the easier it is to take it all for granted, which is precisely why we need to educate the next generation about what actually makes this stuff tick. In other words, we need to get serious about playing with technology, or that digital skills gap is only ever going to get wider.

The post Learning to Love Coding with BBC micro:bit New Inventor Kits appeared first on Tecntrend.

Not enough people are learning the skills required to drive the digital economy. I explore some solutions to this growing problem in this article.

Read the full article on IDG Connect

How can we plug the widening digital skills gap? by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline – https://t.co/BLQ6ELTaw1

— Technology Experts (@IDGCN) September 1, 2016

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When I was about ten, I desperately wanted one of the cute alien robots from Batteries Not Included * but in those days, the most you could hope to find under the Christmas tree was a toy that looked a bit like a robot and made some obliging beeping noises.

The best I could hope for under the Christmas tree when I was a child was a toy that looked like a robot
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Fast-forward to last Christmas, however, and my dream of owning a fully-fledged cute robot finally came true. After watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the sixth time I decided to ‘treat my husband’ to a BB-8. And while the dogs were distinctively unimpressed, we sure had a blast spinning the little guy around.

Yet when I got sent a SPRK+ to test (I DO love this job) I didn’t’ immediately realize that it came from the same people as made the BB-8. As it turns out, Sphero has been making little round robots for quite a while, ever since they graduated from the Techstars accelerator in Boulder, CO, back in 2010.

Sphero has been making little round robots for quite a while
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Like BB-8, Sphero’s latest ball-bot is on an important mission: Teaching kids to code. The company sold over a million robots in 80 countries so far, but the SPRK+ is designed to be their most tinker-friendly and hardwearing robot yet, with a scratch-resistant, waterproof outer shell, it can take a good bouncing.

While it’s not exactly cheap – the SPRK+ retails at around $130 – the fact that you can buy and program your own robot for less than it costs to buy a fancy pair of shoes is a testament to how far technology has come since my own childhood.

What I love about it – as someone with admittedly limited technical skills – is that you can casually start playing around straight away. Tap the ball to your phone and the app syncs the devices automatically. The transparent outer shell lets you see what’s going on inside the robot, and you can drag and drop modular puzzle elements in different sequences to make it do simple things like change colour or roll in different directions.

For those who want to dig deeper though, the sky is the limit. As well as over 150 learning activities, you can tap into a host of programmable features like sound effects, LED lights, sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope. There is a healthy global community of users that collaborate on projects through the Lightning Lab app which works across iOS, Android and Amazon Fire devices. It lets you easily share programs – using Sphero’s own programming language called OVAL – much as you would on GitHub, which is great for building up real-world programming skills.

Users can share their Sphero coding projects much like people do on GitHub
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SPRK teaches all sorts of valuable 21st century skills, cleverly disguised as play
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David Millage, General Manager of Education at Sphero, says that the beauty of SPRK is that it teaches all sorts of valuable 21^st century skills, cleverly disguised as play: “Learning is evolving and we are seeing a transition from consumption to creation in the classroom. Our robots are being used to teach everything from art to physics in a fun and hands-on way that engages students on a new level.”

Who wouldn’t want to build their own Solar System?
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I never tire of preaching the gospel of coding, because as much as not everybody can be good at it, we all should learn as much as possible about the technology that makes the world go around. If nothing else, it’s great exercise for your brain, and with things like Sphero, it’s also fantastic fun. After all, who wouldn’t want to build their own Solar System? And BB-8 also enjoyed meeting his new friend:

Like BB-8, Sphero’s latest ball-bot is on an important mission: Teaching kids to code
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*Classic 80s feel-good film, look it up if somehow you’ve managed to grow up without seeing it.

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The real test of any toy for me starts with that magical moment when you first open the box. If I get that “Christmas morning” kind of feeling, we’re on to a good start. LEGO hits the spot every time, as there’s no sweeter sound in the world than that magic rattling of plastic bricks. But I digress.

With Educational toys it’s a bit more of a tall order though. They’re a bit like vegetables, in that it’s possible for them to be delicious, but the fact they’re supposed to be good for us raises suspicion (or maybe that’s just my self-destructive personality talking).

The test of any toy for me starts with that magic moment when you open the box
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Opening up my goodie box from Technology Will Save Us (TWSU), however, I got that familiar feeling of delight, mixed with a small measure of regret that I  wasn’t a kid any more. As this technically counted as work though, that didn’t matter, so I settled down to happily play with the pretty shiny things.

Technology Will Save Us kits are quite beautiful
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The TWSU kits are quite beautiful. Each is based around a theme or project, and comes with all the hardware that you need to build something fun while learning about technology (and a bunch of other things).

My DIY Gamer kit contained all the components to make a handheld games console
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My DIY Gamer kit contained all the components for me to put together a handheld games console, powered by the Arduino Uno which came with it. Once you have the hardware setup, you can go online and use the step-by-step manuals and videos to code your own games. You’re also encouraged to tap into the extensive Arduino Open Source community and invent your own projects.

You’re encouraged to tap into the Arduino Open Source community and invent your own projects
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With my thirsty plant kit I built a solar-powered moisture sensor
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My other little box of delights contained a “Thirsty Plant Kit” where you build a solar-powered plaster of paris moisture sensor. I love the fact it provides all sorts of outlets for teaching kids about biology, and even encourage them to care for nature and living things by understanding more about what they need in order to survive and thrive. I didn’t go as far as turning it into a water bomb like the kit instructions suggested, but I loved having the option.

I loved the fact you have the option to turn the kit into a water bomb
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Technology Will Save Us reached their Kickstarter goal in around 48 hours
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Technology Will Save Us Co-founder and CEO Bethany Koby tells me that their kits were designed to encourage active play and adventure with technology as well as learning. They should be a fun option for the summer holidays, not something that comes across as a chore or extra study.

Earlier this year TWSU launched a crowdfunding campaign for their first wearable, the Mover Kit, and reached 90% of their Kickstarter goal in the first 48 hours. Since then they raised 3 times that, totalling over $129,000 from 1800 backers in 60 countries. They’ve also secured retail partnerships to market the kits in various territories and been selected as the “toy to watch” in 2016 by Forbes.

It's striking how these kits apply the principles of agile design and user-centricity
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They also partnered up with  global coding club network CoderDojo that lets anybody donate Mover Kit packs to young coders anywhere in the world. a global network of coding clubs

To a self-confessed technophile, and someone who’s worked with more than my fair share of startups, what’s striking about these kits is the elegance with which they apply principles such as agile development and user-centricity. These approaches – which require constant testing and iteration – are at the heart of product development where it comes to apps and software, but here you see them in everything from the attractive colour scheme of the boxes to the careful layout and presentation of the components.

Everything is carefully labelled, with clear and prominent instructions which manage not to sound patronising even to an adult.These are all things that make the user experience flow very smoothly, whether you’re a child or a slightly-older-but-still-in-their-prime person.

Everything is carefully labelled, with clear and prominent instructions
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So if you’re starting to run out of ideas of what to do to entertain the kids during the summer holidays, technology really could come to the rescue in more ways than one. Happy hacking!

These are great projects if you're stuck for ideas of what to do with the kids for #summerholidays
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It’s another improbably sunny day in Helsinki; I’m told by the locals it’s not usually like this, but so far in a country best known for its Winter Wonderland landscapes I’ve been getting a tan.

Mehackit teaches young people programming through robotics, music and visual arts
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Finns are hospitable people and they also feel the urge to soak up the sun while it shines, so we head out to have our chat at a charming local restaurant to make the most of it. My hosts are (Co-founder & Troublemaker) Pia Henrietta Kekäläinen and (Chief Communications Officer & Wizard) Reetta Heiskanen from Mehackit, a start-up that teaches young people programming through an engaging mix of robotics, music and visual arts.

We want to teach young people technological self-confidence and the attitude that they can learn anything
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I start off by asking Henrietta about the road that led her to becoming an entrepreneur. Anecdotally, my impression of the start-up sector in Finland is that it has a healthy dose of female representation at all levels, and I ask her if it might have something to do with the country’s progressive laws which, for example, allow either parent to take generous parental leave as they choose.

I don’t have any official figures around female entrepreneurship in Finland compared to other countries, but I feel it is getting better. The biggest issue is still around investment, because a lot of the investor networks were traditionally male-only clubs, which made it extremely difficult for female entrepreneurs to make the connections needed to fund their ideas.

That said, it seems like Finland is well-placed to lead the way in addressing that problem. Back in 1906, while they were still part of the Russian Empire, the Grand Duchy of Finland was the first country in Europe to grant universal suffrage, which meant that all women, without exception, were eligible to vote and run for office as equals. In 1907 they elected an unprecedented 19 female members to its parliament. Today, with 40% female representation in government, they stand only behind Sweden in that particular metric.

Finland was the first country in Europe to grant women universal suffrage
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Six years ago Henrietta also considered embarking upon a government career, as she has always been interested in diplomacy. She spent a very interesting few months working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, where she organised the media program for dignitary visits, such as that of Vladimir Putin.

I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, but in the end my boss advised me that he thought that I needed something more fast-paced. That’s when I got involved with the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society.

This was back in the early days of Startup Sauna, which began as an informal gathering and eventually gave rise to hugely successful initiatives like Slush and fostered the growth of a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in Finland.

Henrietta also became involved in teaching digital skills through her involvement in Rail Girls, a non-profit organisation that equips women and girls with the tools and inspiration to engage with technology.

We're great at being consumers but we want students to get their hands dirty with wires, sensors, and syntax errors
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These experiences helped pave the way for co-founding Mehackit in 2014, which she describes as a one-stop shop for schools to jump into creative technology education. The format focuses on providing a human mentor to initiate youths into technology principles and spark their interest developing digital skills.

I think that we are great at being consumers, but there’s a huge paradox in making the products so easy to use you don’t need skills, and thus keeping many people away from the process of actually creating it. We want to take down that curtain of simplicity, so to say, and get people’s hands dirty with wires and sensors and live loops and syntax errors.

During the 7-week course, pupils advance at their own pace and build personal projects, which can be as diverse as they like. Local university students are recruited as instructors, but school teachers can also participate and learn without the pressure of being the “technology experts” that can often be daunting when teaching digital natives.

During the 7-week course, pupils advance at their own pace and build personal and diverse technology projects
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The education system in Finland is one of the most well-regarded in the world, but it is also one that’s not prone to rest on its laurels. This makes it a good environment to test out innovative technology-based solutions, and it often leads the way in educational policy. So much so that starting this year coding will become a mandatory part of the school curriculum.

Coding will become part of the school curriculum in Finland in 2016
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Mehackit are now looking to expand from high school to upper secondary level, and is also gearing up for international roll-outs in other Nordic markets like Norway and Sweden before moving on to countries like the UK, where the government has acknowledged the seriousness of the digital skills gap problem.

We want to bring technological self-confidence to youth, and the “I can learn anything” attitude is what is going to be extremely important to progress us as a species as the world around us shifts to a more automated society.

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The technology industry moves so quickly these days, that computer science degrees simply can’t keep up with the pace of change. That’s where “bootcamp-style” courses come in:

“We’re disrupting traditional education both offline and online, by producing junior developers through our onsite and remote courses,” says Evgeny Shadchnev, CEO of Makers Academy. “We make changes to the curriculum every 6 weeks to keep up to date with the industry.”

Makers academy is tackling the coding skills gap by offering both onsite and remote coding courses that claim to make complete beginners job-ready in just 12 weeks. Since starting the company with his Co-founder Rob Johnson in 2013, Shadchnev’s company has attracted £470K in seed funding and graduated over 500 students to jobs as developers. The market demand for those skills is unprecedented; an estimated 1 million people worldwide learn to code every year, but it’s not nearly enough to plug that ever-widening skills gap that worries governments everywhere.

“The UK government has just introduced coding in the school curriculum but it’s going to be years before the kids of today are ready for jobs. We’re solving the problem right now by taking people from completely different backgrounds, putting them through a rigorous bootcamp programme and then placing them in jobs as Junior Developers. Makers Academy focuses not just on the coding skills, but on teaching best software practices like test-driven development and pair programming.”

Makers Academy CEO Evgeny Shadchnev

Their business model is two-sided, charging course fees of £8,000 and taking a hiring fee from partners who hire their students as they finish the bootcamp.

“This means that as a business we got to make sure we are producing employable job-ready graduates, and we achieved 100% placement rate on our first remote course.”

They are certainly not alone in that market, with players such as General Assembly, Iron Yard and FreeCodeCamp also vying to train the workforce powering the digital economy. But at the moment, it seems, there’s plenty of room for everyone.

It’s all very far from Shadchnev’s own ‘computer class’ in school, which introduced him to the very basics, and (perhaps more importantly) revealed an entire world of computer gaming possibilities.

“I remember I was banned from coming anywhere near it for quite a while after I wrote a worm that brought it down for a couple of days,” he laughs.

He believes that education in future will need to be designed much more flexibly, with an emphasis on fitting in around people’s existing lives and careers as opposed to expecting them to commit to multi-year full-time degrees.

Students will also expect to see a clear case for return on investment, specially with rising costs of tuition fees and debt. Perhaps that’s something that traditional universities might struggle with, but that results-focused courses like the ones at Makers Academy are proving so successful at delivering.

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“Learning to code opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. It was like learning a new language. All of a sudden things start to make sense and I began to grasp the inner workings of digital technology and its importance in our everyday lives.”

Growing up in Eastern Turkey, Mujde Esin’s school only had the most basic facilities, and even after moving to Istambul for secondary school, she only had access to rudimentary technology. Coding was a revelation to Mujde, sparking the curiosity to learn more and the confidence to look at the possibilities in the wider world. She improved her English and was eventually awarded a scholarship to do her Masters Degree in the UK.

Learning to code opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me
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 “I wanted other women like myself to have access to these wonderful opportunities. Nothing has a bigger impact in a person’s life than education, but women, especially those from ethnic backgrounds like my own, face many obstacles in obtaining access to education. I thought I could play a part in changing that.”

Mujde founded KizCode in 2015, a social enterprise dedicated to teaching coding to young women from ethnic minority groups.

“Initially we’re targeting tens of thousands of Kurdish and Turkish girls from underprivileged communities, both born in the UK and in Turkey,” she explains. “Learning happens in a fun and safe environment, but it’s incredibly empowering for future women entrepreneurs, who can reach a wider market and more effectively supplement their marketplace-based activities. Coding in this case can be the catalyst to their independence, both financial and intellectual.”

I began to grasp the inner workings of digital technology and its importance in our everyday lives
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“Digital technology is changing or replacing conventional teaching equipment and techniques. This ranges from replacing blackboards with interactive ones to being able to interact with your tutor in virtual environments, and in future all aspects of education will be pervaded by technology in some way or another, and this effect will ripple out into wider society. I believe the next generation will be one of makers, we see children already starting to create their own devices instead of relying on readymade ones. I think giving them the confidence to know how things work and make new ones is the most important thing we can teach them about technology.”

Digital technology is changing or replacing conventional teaching equipment and techniques
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Mujde is a huge fan of other projects that try and close the technology gender gap, such as Code First; Girls, Women Who Code, Stemettes and Girls Who Code, but she also sees the need to specifically engage with ethnic communities, who have different and additional barriers to entry when it comes to accessing technology and education. KizCode received its first funding from a major tech and logistic company in Turkey, and are now looking at partnerships that can help them expand. With the government recently announcing a £20 million fund to help integrate Muslim women into British Society through better English Language learning provision, it seems that initiatives such as these should also be encouraged and supported by all sides.

KizCode are now looking at partnerships that can help them expand
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I believe that technology education has the power to transform our society
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“I believe that technology education has the power to transform our society, not only helping to close the gender and skills gap, but to bring all these diverse communities that currently feel excluded. By offering them positive and tangible alternatives we’re empowering them to make a positive contribution to society, and to benefit from the digital economy. Everybody wins.”

We’re empowering women to make a positive contribution to society and benefit from the digital economy
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When the Raspberry Pi first came on the scene back in 2008 it seemed like a revolutionary idea: An affordable and programmable computer that could be used to teach kids (and adults for that matter) how to code.

When the Raspberry Pi came on the scene back in 2008 it was a revolutionary idea
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As is often the case, the genius of the concept lay in its simplicity. The Pi was a modular blank slate that could be used flexibly in all manner of projects, and like LEGO bricks, the resulting creations were only limited by the users’ own imagination.

The Pi was a modular blank slate that could be used flexibly in all manner of projects
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Yet its CEO and Co-founder Eben Upton doesn’t see it as a disruptive idea per se. Having grown up using the BBC Micro, it seemed natural to provide 21^st Century children with a similar tinkering platform.

As more people use technology at an ever earlier age, fewer get to learn the skills to actually make it
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The fundamental irony that his product addressed was that, that as more people got to use technology at an ever earlier age, fewer and fewer of us got to learn the skills required to actually make it. This digital skills gap is a problem that still persists today, but with over 7 million units sold, it is clear that Raspberry Pi has made significant progress in tackling it.

They have since blazed a trail for other companies such as Arduino who have now brought similar offerings to this arena, and even prompted a revival of the BBC Micro(bit) but when asked, Upton did not actually identify these as competitors.

Raspberry Pi thrives on a culture of collaboration that is a million miles from the cut-throat tech world
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That might be because Raspberry Pi thrives on a culture of collaboration that is a million miles away from the cut-throat tech world of chasing billion-dollar valuations. In fact, they went to market financed by an incredibly modest $200k loan, all of which has now been repaid.

They went to market financed by a modest $200k loan, which has now been repaid
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They currently operate on a scalable model which licenses the technical design for the product, along with the trademark, for partners to manufacture and sell the Raspberry Pi devices.

“The quality of teaching, rather than any technological quick-fix will remain the key determinant of success” Eben Upton, CEO Raspberry Pi Ltd.

They’re not resting on their laurels though, and their future plans are nothing if not ambitious As they continue to expand their Cambridge-based operation and reinvest their profits in educational initiatives, they’re pushing to scale up digital skills education on a global scale.

In November 2015 they merged with Code Club with the aim of bringing such initiatives “to every community in the world”. This was quickly followed by the launch of the Pi Zero, which retailed at a staggeringly low price of £4 ($5 in the US). At the time of writing, units of this model are – understandably – selling out as quickly as they’re being shipped.

The low – some would say ridiculous – price point is an important factor for the success of the Raspberry Pi, not only in making it universally accessible, but psychologically it serves to demystify technology.

The low price point is an important factor for the success of the Pi, making it universally accessible
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There is no need, after all, to feel nervous when playing around with something that only costs a few dollars, and it’s that attitude of encouraging playfulness that makes the device such an effective teaching tool for educators to engage children with.

But tools are only as effective as those using them, thus the huge emphasis placed on building and engaging a global community around the product. A visit to the foundation’s blog quickly reveals how successful that strategy has been, with hundreds of projects showcasing the endless possibilities that the Pi enables.

Technology is not the most important element; it’s still up to educators to bring it to life in the classroom
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But although this crowdsourcing of ideas might not have been possible in the pre-internet age, Upton is keen to emphasize that technology is not the most important element in that equation; it’s still up to educators to find ways of bringing it to life in the classroom:

“Much as in the past – the quality of teaching, rather than any technological quick-fix will remain the key determinant of success,” he says.

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