Programming tutor

Greenfoot, a software package designed to teach programming to secondary school students, jointly developed by Deakin University and the University of Kent in Canterbury, has won a major award in the US, the Java Duke’s Choice Award, presented at the annual Java Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Now in their sixth year, the awards recognise innovation in the world of Java technology and are made to the best and most innovative projects, selected from around the world.

'Greenfoot radically simplifies the programming of computer games and simulations,' said Professor John Rosenberg Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and leader of the Greenfoot project at Deakin University.

Greenfoot, up and running since 2006, is an offshoot of the BlueJ project established by Professor Rosenberg and Dr Kolling in 1997. Like Greenfoot, BlueJ is an integrated Java development environment, but it is designed for a different level – teaching introductory programming to university students.

BlueJ is used in more than 1000 universities world wide and is downloaded at a rate approaching 1 million copies a year. It is considered the option of choice in teaching Java.