We’re a nation that loves a gadget - we’ve got laptops, tablet computers and smartphones and a growing number of us will even queue outside a shop in the cold and rain to get the latest kit when it goes on sale. Despite this love affair, just a tiny fraction of the UK population would actually know how to create the software that powers your device.

IN ANY given week, there are multiple news stories we could attack the BBC with, but their decision to dish out a million pocket-sized computers to all 12-year old students has the potential to kickstart a new digital skills revolution.

The BBC Microbit experience mirrors a similar educational push into the schools of the 1980s with early computers - which ultimately pushed the UK to the forefront of the computing revolution. It was my experiences of the BBC Model B at West Ashton Primary School that switched on my mind to the potential of technology and took me in a very different direction of the family focus on building and farming, leading me to travel the world working for one of world’s biggest tech companies.

The Microbit is an incredibly basis device, with none of the luxuries you would expect - it offers just 25 tiny red LED lights on its front to communicate with you and a connector to make it talk with any other computer or tablet device. The excitement begins when you start communicating with this device in simple software code.

This new BBC project will be supported with internet-based tuition, filled with projects that can take this lifeless sliver of silicon and bring it to life thanks to student-written software that can harness it simple components. So far, this simple device has been used to create a metal detector, a digital spirit level, and even a motion-sensitive musical instrument. These uses sound abstract at best, but help to plant the seeds and principles of coding - the language that controls our modern devices.

A growing number of educational experts see computer coding as important as basic numeracy or literacy, offering students new ways to express themselves and organise their ideas. The Wiltshire of 2015 has just a handful of the factories and large workplaces of my youth, but there’s a real opportunity for students to knuckle down and find themselves creating the great hardware and software that people like me queue up for.

If a plasterer’s son from Steeple Ashton like me can find himself working for Facebook, imagine what your child or grandchild can do with your encouragement and guidance.