Since it launched nearly two years ago the BBC’s Make it Digital initiative has brought together dozens of partners to promote and celebrate all forms of digital creativity, and inspired millions of people to get involved with the technologies that surround us. Digital creativity opens doors to allow us all to take part in and shape our world, and to get many of the good jobs of the future. Digital is the means of production of the coming century we want everyone to control.
We believe that creating a level playing field when it comes to digital opportunity is vital because so much of what we do every day is shaped by digital. We've worked with our partners to deliver real change, using the BBC’s ability to create compelling shows and content and bringing audiences together to encourage people to try something new, like uploading a photograph, signing up as a digital trainee or writing code.
Across BBC News outlets last week, under the banner Tech Talent, we asked whether the UK can compete in the global technology industry - and why we haven't produced a tech giant on the scale of Google or Apple. It’s a topic that matters to everyone involved in Make it Digital, because liberating everyone’s digital creativity, and encouraging entrepreneurs – or those who might become entrepreneurs – are pretty important to our thinking. Creating new companies, coming up with ideas that can change the world, and developing innovative technologies are all aspects of the sort of creativity we want to unleash, alongside our partners.
BBC Weather Watchers
We’re doing this in lots of ways. Working with libraries across the UK we’re encouraging people to sign up as BBC Weather Watchers, posting photographs and weather observations to our website where they can be seen and regularly used on BBC Weather forecasts on television and online. We think that this sort of easy engagement with modern tools like smartphones and digital cameras is vital to build a society that is at ease with the capabilities of the internet and computers.
And on Wednesday evening last week, The One Show featured a wide selection of Weather Watchers photographs as they talked about the Great British Summer that has just come to a stormy end.
BBC micro:bit
We’ve also distributed up to a million BBC micro:bits to 11 and 12 year olds across the entire UK, and as they all enter year 8, or equivalent, we look forward to seeing the fruits of their creative coding reflected in a range of projects as exciting as sending a BBC micro:bit, alongside a Raspberry Pi, into space. If you missed them, here are some amazing examples of how people have used their BBC micro:bits.
Coming up is The Big Food Survey, in collaboration with Wellcome Foundation's ‘The Crunch’. It will be the UK’s biggest ever food and health survey for 12 and 13 year olds, which will take place from Monday 3 -7 October. Students will be asked to use their BBC micro:bits, to gather data about their eating habits over the course of one day.
Then there’s Build it Scotland, which is marking Scotland’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design by encouraging budding architects aged 7-14 to help build Scotland’s top landmarks in a virtual world using 3D design software such as Minecraft, TinkerCad or Sketchup using PCs, laptops or Raspberry Pi. The deadline is October 20th, and we will see what they have created in November when the map is unveiled in Dundee, which is the finale event for the Festival of Architecture and the map with the landmarks will be projected on to a building in the city.
These are just a few of the Make it Digital projects that are inspiring people of all ages and all skill levels to get creative with digital tools. As for Tech Talent’s question of whether the UK can build its own Google or Apple – we think that we can, and that dozens of partners working with Make it Digital can help. Who knows - the CEO of the big British success of 2030 might be coding a BBC micro:bit in a classroom near you!
Jessica Cecil is Controller of BBC Make it Digital.