Category Archives: Greenfoot

Workshops for SIGCSE due soon – Greenfoot?

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A couple of days ago I received an email calling for workshop proposals for SIGCSE 2011.

I have given Greenfoot workshops there for the past few years (and BlueJ workshops before that). Now I am wondering whether I should do the same again.

I am definitely planning to propose a Greenfoot workshop, but I am uncertain about the level that I should aim at. Should I do the same beginners’ workshop (for people who haven’t seen Greenfoot before) or is it maybe time to do an advanced one to help people move forward who have seen the basics of Greenfoot?

I just received the feedback from this year’s workshop, and it was certainly popular. I got really nice, very positive comments (someone wrote “This was exactly the “killer app” that I had hoped to run across at this conference” – thanks!). So that workshop works well as it is. And the fact is without a doubt that the majority of participants at SIGCSE do not know Greenfoot.

On the other hand, we want to support our users. Teachers who have adopted Greenfoot in the past couple of years might like some further tips and opportunity for discussion.

At this stage I am undecided. I will have to make my mind up in the next couple of weeks. If you have an opinion – let me know.

Greenfoot book out now in German

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Now in German: Greenfoot!

The Greenfoot book, which teaches Java programming and object orientation with the Greenfoot environment, is now available in German (as well as the original English).

That’s great news: Germany is probably the country with most Greenfoot users outside the English speaking world, and having the book in German will make use of the book – be it adoption in the classroom or casual reading by hobbyists – much easier.

I have just received my copy, and it looks great. The publisher has done a great job with full colour printing and good quality paper.

The translation is great, too – it was done by Carsten Schulte from the Freie Universität Berlin. I was really lucky that the publisher found such an excellent translator. It shows that he’s a computer scientist and an educator as well. His deep understanding of the concepts has clearly led to a much better translation than someone without subject knowledge could have produced.

I’m happy to see it out, and to see it end up looking this nice.

The Greenroom is open

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Our Greenfoot project has been going well for a while. The software has been stable for a couple of years now, whenever we presented it we got excellent feedback, and user number have steadily grown (to about 20,000 downloads a month at the moment).

There was, however, one big gaping hole: easy availability of good teaching material. Educational software in itself actually has very little impact – no matter how good it is – if there is not also teaching material available that teachers can easily take and use.

The first step in addressing this was the writing of the Greenfoot textbook. This is done now and was published last year. But we wanted to go a step further. So now we have:

The Greenroom

The Greenroom is a community web site, where teachers can find and share teaching material, discuss ideas or problems, and communicate with each other and the Greenfoot development team.

We have adopted a wiki-style ownership model for teaching resources on that site: Instead of resources being owned by their original creator (as is the case in other resource repositories), here they are owned by “the community”.

Of course, proper credit is given to the creator (and all other contributors), but any resource is editable by anyone on the site. We hope that this may lead to collaborative development of resources. Maybe someone has a worksheet that they can upload, others can improve is, add exercises, translate it to other languages, or add ideas.

Resources may even be just an initial project idea, where another Greenroom member then might take up the idea and develop a small project, someone else might add exercises, and so on.

The idea of this style of collaborative development is quite ambitious, and it is not at all clear whether it will work. But one can always hope!

So far, the beginnings are looking promising: We opened the Greenroom less than three weeks ago, and so far there are already more than 200 teachers subscribed, and more than 20 different resources available. I am carefully optimistic.

In future, we plan to extend the Greenroom to add more local information, so that members can see groups and events in their local area that might be relevant to them.

Let’s see where it goes. For now, I just find it exciting to watch how people start to communicate in the Greenroom.

New Greenfoot video: Sharing

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In the past, a question that often came up after people had implemented their Greenfoot scenarios, was: How can I give this game I made to my friends?

For a while now, Greenfoot has an answer to that: the Export function. Greenfoot can transform scenarios into stand-alone applications, prepare them to run in a web page, or even publish them to an open web server for the whole world to see and play.

Since this is a FAQ, I have made a video that explains this i more detail. Enjoy!

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Play video Icon_External_Link

Greenfoot Coding Contest: CodePoint 2008

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CodePoint 2008 – The 1st Annual Greenfoot Coding Contest – opens for business on 15th October.

If you use Greenfoot, or if you like writing Java programs, or if you want to win a great prize, have a look at the web page for

CodePoint 2008

You can win a Wii Games Console, or an iPod Touch, or even a Greenfoot coffee mug!

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It’s open: The Greenfoot Gallery

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For the past few months, we have worked on creating the Greenfoot Gallery – and now it’s finally officially open.

The Greenfoot Gallery is a place for people to publish their Greenfoot scenarios, and try out other people’s work, comment on it, rate it, etc. Think of it as a kind of YouTube for Greenfoot games. Have a look!

You can use the Gallery (look at scenarios, play) straight away, or you can create an account for yourself to comment on them or upload your own.

Uploading content to the Gallery is easy: Use the ‘Export’ function in Greenfoot, and you’re almost there.

Teaching My Daughter To Code, Part IV: Return of the Daleks

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Welcome back, dear readers, to the fourth part of Sophie’s journey of writing a DrWho computer game with Greenfoot and Java.

If you have read the previous parts, then thank you for sticking with us for so long! (If not, you may like to start reading here: Part I, Part II, Part III).

I’ll try to make it short today – it’s been a long day, and it’s getting late. But this programming session I’d like to record took place five days ago, I have only sparse notes, and I’d like to get it down before I forget too much. I have been busy this week, so I haven’t had time to write this up earlier, but there was so much lovely and encouraging feedback on the previous posts that encouraged me to continue writing this up.

Thus, without further delay, on to the next task: Reaching the TARDIS with the energy pellets!
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