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Last week we were honoured to get involved in the BIMA Schools Digital Challenge - a scheme aimed at encouraging school or college students to open their minds to the potential of the digital world.

What an inspiring afternoon we had. Hosted at Channel 4's very exciting building in Westminster, we saw the 5 shortlisted entries for the winner's spot.

The challenge was a simple and broad one - come up with a digital solution for a community issue.

The ideas generated by the entrants were really diverse and creative: a virtual school without language barriers; an information hub to enable greater understanding of people from different religious backgrounds; a music video; an online museum; and a community scheme to encourage wider usage of the internet by pensioners.

What was most impressive was the ability of kids as young as 13 or 14 to make use of complex digital technologies in ways which had genuine applications. Real, hard, useful skills like video editing, HTML coding, image manipulation, design, and project management were on display.

In an industry which continues to suffer from a skills shortage, this is very encouraging indeed.

Thanks to BIMA for inviting us to get involved - we gave a Wacom graphics tablet to the winning school.

Check out the BIMA blog for more information.