greenfoot: Combining Object Visualisation with Interaction, The 19th Annual OOPSLA conference, Educators' Symposium

The introduction of programming education with objectoriented languages slowly migrates down the curriculum and is now often introduced at the high school level. This migration requires teaching tools that are adequate for the intended target audience. In this paper, we present a new tool for teaching objectoriented programming aimed at students at or below college level, with special emphasis of supporting school age learners. This tool was designed by analysing and combining the most beneficial aspects of several existing tools. It aims at combining the simplicity and visual appeal of Karel the Robot with much of the flexibility and interaction of BlueJ, while at the same time opening up possibilities of new applications. Categories and Subject Descriptors