The BlueJ/Greenfoot
Project
The BlueJ/Greenfoot
Principal Investigator
Professor Michael Kölling
University of Kent, La Trobe University Australia and Deakin University Australia
Summary
With over 6.5M downloads, the BlueJ and Greenfoot projects are aimed at the design, development and (free) distribution of Java programming environments specifically aimed at education. Two integrated development environments have been produced and released to date: BlueJ and Greenfoot. BlueJ is aimed at university level, while Greenfoot is targeted for the middle school and high school students. However, both environments have been used across the education spectrum.
These systems have been instrumental in making Java the prime language in early programming education. When choosing a teaching language, teachers consider several factors: the language characteristics, available environments (and their cost), availability of teaching resources, and community support. Of these, the technical language characteristics represent the smallest influence; environments, resources and community support are stronger drivers in language adoption than the language itself. This project provides these materials and community support to teachers at all levels at no cost.
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