DanG BloG: yet another DanG BloG

networkworld.com has an article celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Atari 800.  To quote them, "... It's the 30th anniversary of this 8-bit PC classic. We celebrate the occasion as we always do, by tearing the product apart and showing you the pieces. ..."

  This is relevant for me in that I learned how to write programs initially on the old Atari 8-bit computers.  Sort of by accident.  When you didn't have a cartridge loaded, the BASIC interpreter came up.  There's only so many times you can look at the prompt and wonder what the heck it's for.  So I started typing into the BASIC interpreter and tried to make sense of the errors it spat back.  Eventually I worked out that you could create subroutines and so forth, and found some information on how to write programs.  Good times.  It was fun to create your own things.

  This ties in, for me, directly with the reason for running computer clubs.  Namely, as the "Why Johnny can't code" article from Salon points out, "BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming."  Go buy a computer - PC, Mac, whatever.  Where's the ability to create things on it that comes with the computer and is easily accessible?  Where's the free BASIC programming language or Scratch or Squeak or Alice or Greenfoot or BlueJ or NetBeans or Java Development Kit?  Hmm, there seems to be a trial subscription to McAfee anti-something-or-other...  It's not there.  You have to know where to find those things.

  I love the idea that the One Laptop Per Child has built-in.  It's a button.  When you press the button, you can see (and modify!) the code to what you're doing.  David Pogue shows you how at time index 2:20 right here.  Proprietary vs. open source discussions aside, how basic of a kid thing is this?  "How does this work?  Oh, here, press this button and find out for yourself, take it apart, look at the guts... change it..."  Apart from that, the OLPC machine comes with Python, Forth, JavaScript, Csound, Squeak Etoys, and so on.  So there's no question about having something available on the machine to learn by doing, to create things instead of wonder why you're staring at a dialog asking you to purchase the full version of anti-something-or-other which has now expired 30 days after purchase.

  The thing I find most interesting about the OLPC program is it is "an education program" and not "a laptop program."  If you look at what people think the underlying device for this "education program" might look like in about three years, best guesses are a device that has the following characteristics:

• will be “more like a sheet of paper”
  
• total cost of ownership for the device, including Internet connectivity, is around $1 per week per child
• completely plastic and unbreakable
• waterproof
• 1/4" thick
• full color, reflective and transmissive, no bezel, no holes
• consumes 1 Watt of power
• costs $75
• can be ready in 2012
• No cost connectivity will start up with the ITU in Geneva
• The ITU is the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, working to bring high-speed Internet service to at least half of the world's population by 2015

  Which to me sounds a lot like Alan Kay's "dynabook" concept, which would be an ok improvement over my venerable old Atari 800.  Which, as it turns out for me, the Atari 800 wasn't so much a "desktop computer project" as it was an "education project."

The first session of the "Free 15-week JavaFX Programming (with Passion!)" online course wrapped up July 25th with participation of about 4000 students.

The second session of the course will start from Aug. 25th, 2009.  For registration, all you have to do is to send a blank email to the following email alias

javafxprogramming-subscribe-AT-googlegroups-DOT-com

This course runs very much like a regular college course in which the students are expected to do weekly homework after studying the presentation material and doing the hands-on lab but it is free and can be taken online.  There is also class email alias where students can ask/answer questions.

For more information, please go to the course websites below.

Course topics: http://www.javapassion.com/javafx/#Topics

Course website: http://www.javapassion.com/javafx

Course FAQ: http://www.javapassion.com/coursefaq.html

Here's a quick video showing student participation at JavaOne - I've said this before and I'll say this again - where was all of this when I was a student:

Here's another quick video with Nicole Yankelovich talking about Project Wonderland, it's a good introduction to Project Wonderland, and for students, some words about virtual worlds as a day job:

And if you are interested in Project Wonderland, there's a lot of recent activity there, you might also want to check out:

• Project Wonderland Presence in Your Buddy List
• Project Wonderland on the Amazon EC2 Elastic Computing Cloud
• Project Wonderland Student Challenge 2009

 

Here's a quick 2 minute clip showing student participation at JavaOne:

Here's another quick one with Nicole Yankelovich talking about Project Wonderland:

  If the network is the computer (and we think it is), then what do you do with it?  Well, hopefully lots of things that involve education and helping others, creating and contributing.  Otherwise the participation age is not so participatory.  Relatively off the radar has been a tool in the works for some time and coming on line tonight, May 15th at 7pm CDT, called Wolfram Alpha that just might be the next big thing.  If not, it will be extremely useful for education in mathematics and science, as well as a host of other categories where computing has been less about computation and more about assembling piles of hardware and software.  So, ok, what is it?  Easiest answer is here (and is anyone but me amused that the "loading..." percentage comes up as "NaN%" on a site with the sheer brilliance of Mathematica and its creators?  I'm guessing that's on purpose because Mathematica could probably show it to you in 3D...)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

  Stephen Wolfram himself explains what it is best here: http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

I've excerpted from another article below a summary of what the tool is in case you're curious but don't want to plow through the articles, though:

quoted from http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/08/wolfram-alpha-computes-answers-to-factual-questions-this-is-going-to-be-big/

"A Computational Knowledge Engine for the Web

In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a “computational knowledge engine” for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you. It doesn’t simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn’t just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn’t simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions — like questions that have factual answers such as “What country is Timbuktu in?” or “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?” or “What is the average rainfall in Seattle?” Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions."

  Examples of using this kind of tool are extensive, and some of the knowledge domains available initially are listed in the posting below. I think some of the categories in mathematics and science are particularly interesting and will be very useful in education for those subjects in particular:

http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/05/11/wolframalpha-examples/

Yet another very cool video - this one includes using JavaFX on desktop and mobile (so, 2 screens of your life, yeah?) with SunSPOTs and multi-touch sensor manipulation.  Check it out:

Find more videos like this on Open Source University Meetup

Now if I could just get 4 Wii controllers hooked up to it for a round of "Super Mario Desktop Media Brawl."  Oy-vay.

Here's another video from our "Bring Your Daughters and Suns To Work" event:

I got a chance to participate in the 2009 "Bring Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day".  It was a lot of fun.  Here is a quick video fly by of some of the stuff going on, and, yes... if you look close you'll see http://alice.org in action there as well, thanks to excellent work from the Carnegie Mellon University Alice team:

  Check out Alice and other tools that are a lot of fun to use and create projects, both for sons and daughters and parents as well at http://java.com/engage

  If you'd like to join a discussion about getting started with some of these tools to teach programming, come by and visit us at the Programming with Duke & Friends site.

I get asked about open source a lot.  Make that "A LOT."  How are you going to make money by giving stuff away?  Make it up in volume?!?

I think Scott explains it very well, interview is here:

Scott McNealy interview on open source

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?sid=1620533&nid=35

Favorite quote: "Find a startup in the last 7 years that doesn't use open source.  You can't."

Hey, somebody added me on facebook, great let me just log in and...

 

and most every little "click here so as to not offend the friend that offered you XYZ..." wants me to add their application, go send the application to everyone else on facebook and so forth.  Yick.  Delete delete delete delete...   Am I the only one getting tired of "Your friend Bob just super poked you on your Fun Wall, click here to super poke him back on his Fun Wall and lose another XX minutes wandering around trying to find out what this was all about..."?

I just found out a former team mate passed away.  Irwin Feig of Buford, Georgia died Monday, June 23, 2008.  We'll miss you, Irwin.  Claudia's blog is here.

 

 

  I've read a number of posts lately that point in a similar direction, which is we our educating our students as if we are preparing them for a hundred years ago, not 20 or 30 years from now.   I also get the nagging feeling that there's a tide rising and most of us have a course set with no adjustment assuming the tide is at a constant level.  School is school, what worked 100 years ago to service an agrarian age should work just fine for the current age.  No Child Left Behind, although seeming to "teach to the test" at least... um... leaves no child behind... right?  With the proliferation of computer desktops, mobile phones and so forth, wouldn't you think that enrollment in computer science would be through the roof?  Well, it's at a 30 year low, actually..  Not to say that computers themselves are going away, quite the contrary.  But the computer science deparment, that particularly odd thing that needs to insert the word "science" into it's title so that it can continue to hang out near the mathematics department from which it sprang... that's the place where you grab a keyboard and spend a week typing in your "Hello, World" Java program and by Friday maybe you've gotten past syntax errors, compiler issues, and managed to see those special "Hello, World" characters appear on the screen... that place seems irrelevant these days.  Why in the world would you want to type in a bunch of cruft that displays "Hello, World" on a screen with no graphics?  "Dude, I can do that on my mobile phone faster than you can say it.  What's the point?  You got any classes on virtual reality I can take so I can own my own business in Second Life?"  Some things to think about below...

Exhibit A: Here's one of my favorite talks on, hmm, careful here... "Creativity as something to encourage in education" and not ruthlessly educate students out of it.  Excellent TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson entitled "Do Schools kill creativity?":

Please watch this talk, but I think one of his early points is worth pulling in here even if you don't click the play button.

• "It's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp.  If you think of it, children starting school this year (given the talk was given in 2006...) will be retiring in 2065.  Nobody has a clue!  Despite all the expertise [...] nobody has a clue what the world will look like in 5 years time.  And yet we're meant to be educating them for it"

Exhibit B: The "Shift Happens" presentation, or variants thereof:

Some data points worth pulling inline in case you aren't watching that one, either:

• today's learners will have 10 to 14 jobs... by age 38
• the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004 (not to mention that the people holding those jobs in 2010 started school around 1970)
• Nintendo (as in video games) invested more than $140 million in research and development in 2002 alone - the US federal government spent less than half as much on research and innovation in education
• There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month - where did people ask the questions before?
• The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet
• It is estimated that a week's worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century
• It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 10 18 ) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year - that's estimated to be more than in the previous 5000 years
• The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years - it is predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010

Exhibit C: Robert Cringely's, installment the last couple of months, a series of three posts on education and technology:

1) War of the Worlds: The Human Side of Moore's Law - excerpts:

•  "... we've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools...."
• "... Kids can't go to school today without working on computers. ..."
• "... Homeschooling, charter schools, these things didn't even exist when I was a kid, but they are everywhere now. ..."
• "... We are nearing the time when paying dues and embracing proxies for quality may give way to having the ability to know what kids really know, to verify what they can really do ..."

2) Amish Paradise: There is no one correct response to the generatonal change that's coming thanks to Moore's Law - excerpts:

•  "... the Amish have been on this same "new" educational path forever. Their ability to produce nearly 100 percent productive citizens (and very nice furniture) for about fifty bucks per student per year is especially galling to those government schools that spend $16K and turn out a lot of slackers...."
• "... because of cheap computers and the Internet, the ability to solve problems ad hoc has become more efficient than teaching kids about problems and issues that will never face them. As a result, the US has let itself become less competitive by putting so much money into a product (a kid) making both its cost and its ability globally uncompetitive. So, instead of putting more effort into making globally competitive products, we put more effort into blaming those who are smarter at using technology that was mostly invented here. ..."
• "... The next generations will use technology even more than we do and they'll use it differently. This difference will form a feedback loop that will in turn alter the very structure of our society and its institutions. ..."

3) Ozzy Knows Best: Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne are the unwitting inventors of  prototype for digital education - excerpts:

•  "... Our grandchildren will run a world very different from the one we ran and many institutions will simply have to adjust or die...."
• "... Parents who are today in their 20s grew up with personal computers, mobile phones and video games. More importantly, their parents did, too.  This new generation of parents lives in a digital world and has little patience with analog traditions. Where we think of bricks and books they think of electrons and photons. Where we remember what time the library opens, they wonder why it should ever close...."
• "... For education, the personal computer is probably a dead end. It's not that we won't continue to have and use PCs in schools, but the market and intellectual momentum clearly lie elsewhere. So forget about personal computers: the future of education probably lies with digital games...."

And on that last note, I have to pop in for a few moments of confirmation and mega-dittoes.  I've been using Scratch and Alice recently with students.  I can liken the responses to the usage of these tools in the following way:

Class Project for 4th graders:

• Create a document in Word
• Create an HTML page

Class Response from 4th graders: 

I might as well have said, "it's time to do 100 sit-ups, everybody on the floor, let's go..." - there are a few eager beavers but by and large, "why are we doing this again?"

Class Project for 4th graders:

• Create a video game using Scratch based on a homework assignment
• Create a movie using Alice based on a homework assignment
• Create a robot car project using Squeak that drives itself around a track

Class Response from 4th graders:

Roughly akin to what you'd get if you walked into the computer lab and said, "Who wants ice cream?" -  nearly unanimous "Boo-YEAH!!"

 

      

If you're interested (casually, professionally, personally, other...) in 3D virtual environments as a target for the next generation of education, interaction, and business.  (whew!  find something that doesn't encompass...) then take a hop over to the Cobalt Project.  (blue ball on left)  It's a refinement of the 3D Squeak environment Croquet.  (red ball on right)  Lots of interesting activity going on with this.  If you haven't seen this yet, here are a few vids.  First, Croquet:

Next up, Rich White and company over at Greenbush Education Service Center are using Cobalt to build interesting things with their Edusim3D project:

 Granted, chickens and Alice walking around spinning Sierpiński triangles does not, itself, compelling education content make.  However, well, rather than just throw in more vids, check out Kevin Roebuck's post on the same topic.  Very cool.   Where was all this stuff when I was a k-12 student....

Kevin Roebuck's EduSim blog entry 

What Would DanG Do At JavaOne 2008 (WWDanGDAJ12008) if he weren't otherwise occupied with the usual JavaOne "Things That Need Doing?" Glad you asked. I'd clone myself enough to attend the following JavaOne 2008 sessions:

BOF-5001	Using phoneME Technology to Power Everything from Micro-Embedded to Desktop Applications
BOF-5044	Mars Rover Operations Imaging and Mapping with Java Technology
BOF-5061	Programming Our World: The Sun SPOT Wireless Sensor/Actuator Platform
BOF-5091	Toward a Consumer IDE: Get What You Want When You Want It
BOF-5238	Guidelines, Tips, and Tricks for High-Performance Java Technology-Based Application Graphical User Interfaces
BOF-5265	Java Technology, Music, and You
BOF-5314	A Close Look at the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit
BOF-5316	Automate Mobile Application Testing with the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit
BOF-5403	PHP Development Environment: Extending Java IDEs
BOF-5451	Blu-ray and Java Technology Roundtable
BOF-5454	Advanced Java ME Debugging
BOF-5506	JavaFX TV Platform Overview
BOF-5526	NASA World Wind Java Technology BOF
BOF-5611	Free Mobile-to-Mobile Money Transmission Proves Popular in Many Countries
BOF-5632	Real-World Java ME Based Applications with Mobile Service Architecture
BOF-5804	Meet with the JavaFX Tools Team
BOF-5832	Video Game Development on the Java Platform: Past, Present, and Future of Java Technology Games
BOF-5856	Best Practices for Efficient MIDP Programming
BOF-5911	Beatnik: Building an Open Social Network Browser
BOF-5941	NetBeans IDE Plug-In Module Development for 3-D Model Viewer, Using Java OpenGL (JOGL)
BOF-5956	Dancing Duke on Your PlayStation Portable: Porting phoneME Software to PlayStation Portable
BOF-5992	How to Build RESTful Clients with the JavaScript, Ruby, and JavaFX Programming Languages
BOF-6071	The Business Case for OpenCable Application Development
BOF-6468	JXTA Technology on Wheels
BOF-6541	Strengthening Your Voice: Do We Need a Mobile Developer Alliance?
BOF-6620	Robot Fusion: Mobile Robots and Sun SPOTs Collaborate to Hunt Humans
BOF-6821	Sony Ericssons Advanced Use of the Content Handler API, JSR 211
LAB-6400	Create Your Own Mobile Game
LAB-6410	Building a Flickr(Pisca) Client on Mobile Phones
LAB-7350	JavaFX Technology-Based Applications: Rich Client Applications with Cool Effects
LAB-7400	Project Darkstar
LAB-7430	Developing Distributed Wireless Applications Using Sun SPOT Systems
PAN-5577	Mobile Service Architecture: Spelling Out the LInk Between JSR Features and JSR Draft Reviews
PAN-7372	Case Studies from the JavaFX Technology World
TS-4794	A JavaFX Script Programming Language Tutorial
TS-4842	Designing an MMORPG with Project Darkstar
TS-4964	Pushing Java OpenGL (JOGL) to the Limit with Stellarium
TS-5138	The JavaFX Platform: Sexy Interfaces For Mere Mortals
TS-5140	Mobile Service Architecture 2: Latest News on JSR 248 and 249
TS-5147	Mobile SOA: End-to-End Java Technology-Based Framework for Network Services
TS-5152	Overview of the JavaFX Script Programming Language
TS-5251	Pushing Java Technology to the Limits: Turning a General-Purpose PC into an HDTV
TS-5263	Jamming with Java Technology: Making Music with JFugue and JFrets
TS-5449	Java Technology for Blu-ray and TV: Authoring for Performance Diversity
TS-5523	Putting 3-D Earth into Your Applications and Web Pages
TS-5546	Extending Swing to Run Multitouch Applications (Multitouch Software)
TS-5584	Building Interactive Mobile Messaging (Short Message Service) Applications
TS-5631	Get on the Map with the Java ME Location API
TS-5635	Near Field Communication Realized
TS-5638	Writing Connected Device Configuration Applications for Resource-Constrained Devices
TS-5654	Entertainment While Walking: MobileTV Java ME Solution
TS-5657	JavaFX Technology: Bring the Web with You--Multiple Interfaces to Games, Chat, and More
TS-5682	Signing Java ME Application and Signing Them in The Java Verified Program
TS-5683	Avoiding the Bumps in Development for Java ME: Best Practices
TS-5711	Creating Games on the Java Platform with the jMonkeyEngine
TS-5722	Interactive Application Development for IPTV
TS-5767	Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR 1): The Revolution Continues
TS-5776	China Mobile Unified Mobile Application Development Platform
TS-5802	Mobile End-to-End Communication Services with Java ME and Java EE
TS-5815	Going Mobile with JavaFX Script Technology, Groovy, and Google Android
TS-5841	Project Aura: Recommendation for the Rest of Us
TS-5888	Driving Innovation in Packaged Media (Blu-ray) User Experience
TS-5957	Open Mobile Sync: Open-Source Mobile Enterprise Data Synchronization
TS-5968	JavaFX Platform Tools Strategy and Direction
TS-6019	A Look into Development for the JavaFX Mobile/TV Platform with the NetBeans IDE
TS-6074	High-Performance Graphics for Mobile Devices
TS-6125	Project Wonderland: A Toolkit for Building 3-D Virtual Worlds
TS-6127	Build Your Own Multitouch Interface with Java and JavaFX Technology
TS-6163	Building Effective Mobile Enterprise Applications
TS-6244	Regional and Cultural Accessibility for Java ME: Africa
TS-6296	Next-Generation Java ME CDC/MIDP/OSGi Stack for Mobile Devices
TS-6298	Designing Graphical Model-Driven Applications: Lego MindStorm
TS-6304	How to Port phoneME Advanced Software to Google Android, iPhone, OpenMoko, LiMO, and More
TS-6495	Project SunSPOT: A Java Technology-Enabled Platform for Ubiquitous Computing
TS-6509	Incorporating Media into JavaFX and Java Technology-Based Applications
TS-6574	How to Implement Your Own OpenSocial Container on the Java Platform
TS-6609	Using JavaFX Script To Build Swing Applications
TS-6610	Inside The JavaFX Script Technology-Based Runtime APIs: Scene Graph & WebKit
TS-6611	Filthy-Rich Clients: Filthier, Richer, Clientier
TS-6656	Extreme GUI Makeover: Swing Meets FX
TS-7051	JavaFX Mobile Platform Architecture and APIs
TS-7192	Mobility and Device General Session

 

Somebody sent me a link to Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" TEDTalk.  Wow.  That's the best and most empassioned talk I've ever seen on the subject.  Definitely worth a watch:

Related to what freshbrain.org is all about, here are some resources for those of you interested in using computers as tools to enhance learning for kids, while staying on free and/or open source software tools:

HTML using SeaMonkey

• make a web page for a landing place for students' projects
• Seamonkey is a Mozilla project including HTMl editor, browser, etc.
• runs on mac / windows / etc.
• free software (yay!)

Alice v2

What is Alice and what is it good for? What is Alice? (wordy) What is Alice? (abbreviated) Although computer programming has existed in its modern form for half a century, it still eludes all but a small fraction of society. While programming is an inherently difficult activity, there are currently many barriers, both mechanical and sociological, that prevent large portions of the population from learning to program a computer. Learning to program a computer is hard. Alice address both the mechanical and sociological barriers that currently prevent many students from successfully learning to program a computer. Alice addresses the mechanical barriers to programming by making it much easier for students to create programs. Rather than having to correctly type commands according to obscure rules of syntax, students drag-and-drop words in a direct manipulation interface. This user interface ensures that programs are always well-formed. In addition, Alice reifies object-based programming by providing animated, on-screen 3D virtual objects. Alice makes learning to program easier. And it's fun. Sociological barriers are far more complex.  Alice addresses the specific needs of the subpopulation of middle school girls. By supporting storytelling, an intrinsically motivating activity for middle school girls, Alice will make programming a means to an exciting end. Alice makes programming more accessible to girls as well as boys.

• alice.org - Alice v2.0 is the next major version of the Alice 3D Authoring system, from the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. It has been completely rewritten from scratch over the past few years. The focus of the Alice project is to provide the best possible first exposure to programming for students ranging from middle schoolers to college students.

• runs on mac / windows / etc.
• free software (thanks Carnegie Mellon University! )
• some support for export as applet
• alice.org/getting_alice_applets_to_work.htm
  but there are issues - see http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=709
• currently, Alice can be used to have students place their projects on their web pages but verify it works for you first
• no support for creating more 3d models without external tool excluding limited he-builder / she-builder

Alice v3 is "Storytelling Alice"

• "Story Telling Alice" (STA) is impressive but not fully released
• a windows only (boo!) preliminary version is available for download as well as a PDF Guide explaining some of it
• see Electronic Arts SIMS collaboration announcement
• see also www.alice.org/community/forumdisplay.php?f=28
  for Alice v3 news and forum posts
• free software (yay!)

Greenfoot

• What is Greenfoot Greenfoot is an extension to BlueJ focused on video game and/or simulation environment. Consider greenfoot as a combination between a framework for creating two-dimensional grid assignments in Java and an integrated development environment (class browser, editor, compiler, execution, etc.) suitable for novice programmers. While greenfoot supports the full Java language, it is especially useful for programming exercises that has a visual element. In greenfoot object visualisation and object interaction are the key elements.  If you know BlueJ and a microworld framework (like Karel the Robot or the AP Marine Biology Case Study) consider greenfoot as the best from both: object interaction (BlueJ) and object visualization (microworlds).
• good support for export as applet in Greenfoot v1.2 and forward,use it to have students place their projects on their web pages
• see also the listings for Greenfoot @ ACM SIG Computer Science Education 2007 Conference specifically Wednesday Workshops search down to "Programming With Greenfoot (Or: Introducing Java Via Games And Simulations)"
• >University of Kent Center of Excellence in Object-Oriented Teaching and Training
• Teaching Programming in Schools with Java
• Problems in the initial teaching of programming using Java: the case for replacing J2SE with J2ME
• mygame.java.sun.com/MyGame/ (try a few of the "Highest Rated" examples, these were developed by contest participants during JavaOne)
• students tend to get a kick out of being able to easily create and modify a video game, associate their own graphics and sounds (make sure they have a working mic and audio capture program so they can record the noises themselves) and post it to a web page that anyone with a java enabled browser can play
• If you look at Greenfoot -> BlueJ -> NetBeans BlueJ edition -> NetBeans as a path from beginner environment to what professionals use, it's a very appealing progression staring with something that will do any valid java code from the start. The only thing I'd change is to provide some sort of Alice-like drag-and-drop-coding environment for the younger students so they're not stumbling on a semicolon in the wrong place keeping them from compiling. But, it's all free and that's a very small gripe toward a very valuable set of tools for teaching.
• the Greenfoot talk I went through at the last SIG ACM Computer Science Education conference is documented at http://www.greenfoot.org/workshop/greenfoot-workshop-slides.pdf
  and materials available here http://www.greenfoot.org/workshop/
• runs on mac / windows / etc.
• free software (yay!)

Squeak

• squeak.org - Squeak is a modern, open source full-featured implementation of the powerful Smalltalk programming language and environment. Squeak is highly-portable - even its virtual machine is written entirely in Smalltalk making it easy to debug, analyze, and change. Squeak is the vehicle for a wide range of projects from multimedia applications, educational platforms to commercial web application development.
• squeakland.org - Squeakland has been developed to offer a variety of fun experiences to people of all ages who use their computers to create. Squeakland is meant to be a playground for developing a community of people who want to work together to invent new media types.
• a wonderful book by B.J. Allen-Conn and Kim Rose, "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom - Using Squeak to Enhance Math and Science Learning"
• the "Weekly Squeak" @ http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/ is a useful summary of what's going on in the Squeak world every week or so
• Squeak is Smalltalk underneath the e-toys script tiles but, as Alan Kay and Seymour Papert would say, there are some very simple powerful ideas in there for education
• Squeak e-toys are being used for the XO OLPC machine and SUGAR interface
• there's a squeak plug-in that allows projects to be put on web pages
• runs on mac / windows / etc.
• free software (yay!)

ACM SIG Computer Science Education

• ACM SIG CSE 2008 conference is in Portland, Oregon from
  March 12th - March 15
• http://www.cs.duke.edu/sigcse08/
• Sun and others sponsored the conference last year and the connection through Greenfoot was certainly interesting

One Laptop Per Child Activity

• There was a lot of focus on the OLPC at the SqueakFest 2007 conference
• individual sessions and information are posted at the SqueakFest 2007 blog
• Given Sun's involvement in Curriki / Curriculum Wiki / Global Education & Learning Community, "bridging the digital divide," and so on, I found this interesting... I noticed the One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) listed this under the "children" section:
• EXPLORING
• The XO gives learners opportunities they have not had before
• Tools such as a Web browser, rich media player, and e-book reader bring into reach domains of knowledge that are otherwise difficult-or impossible-for children to access.
• separate but related topic, see also: click through Sophie-Croquet and the -> Trailer -> Warp -> Trailer HD links
• although this is just a cute movie illustrating what might eventually be, a project like Sophie based on Squeak for interactive books (imagine Curriki available in this form, all students have it available off of their laptops) and croquet for 3D past the target of Alice where you can go collaborative
• EXPRESSING
• The XO helps children build upon their active interest in the world around them to engage with powerful ideas. Tools for writing, composing, simulating, expressing, constructing, designing, modeling, imagining, creating, critiquing, debugging, and collaborating enable children to become positive, contributing members of their communities.
• LEARNING
• The XO takes learners beyond instruction. They are actively engaged in a process of learning through doing. ("Constructivism") Children also learn by teaching, actively assisting other learners.


• RESOURCES
• The XO not only delivers the world to children, but also brings the best practices of children and their teachers to the world. Each school represents a learning hub; a node in a globally shared resource for learning.

Please watch this space, freshbrain.org, which, as of 8/13/2007 lists a holder page with the description:

An independent nonprofit focused on enhancing the education and development of our youth in the areas of business and technology by providing hands-on real world experience.

More info as it unfolds, but if you have any interest in helping to to educate kids using technology as a tool, keep an RSS reader pointed to the FreshBrain blog:

FreshBrain Blog

The FreshBrain project is being created to enhance and extend the existing educational system. It will give students a chance to work with the latest technology in a supportive environment where they can explore and create, where they can take an idea and turn it into something real. If you think of the Curriki Global Education & Learning Community project as a resource to "open source" k-12 edcucational materials... and we hope you do! You could think of the FreshBrain project as a place to invite students to start getting technology training and exposure that would lead to using the technology to enhance the learning materials that are accumulating in Curriki. This starts to provide resources for education in places where web access is empowering and enabling, as opposed to "computer class" in a school being 30 minutes a week of typing and presentation training.

After many sleepless nights on the part of many a Java dude and dudette, JavaOne 2007 hit San Francisco the week of May 7th. Lots of cool stuff going on there, things I either saw or participated in:

• CommunityOne


• NetBeans Day


• leaning toward being carbon netural


• JavaFX


• Engineers Without Borders


• JavaFX demos


• Mobility General Session


• Hands On Labs


• Toy Show

Sometimes, there's a geek gadget that just screams out... "It's about time!"...
The Doctor Who T.A.R.D.I.S. USB Hub

I haven't verified it myself yet, but it does allegedly make... THE SOUND

Just reading through some presentations and found out about digital divide network. Pretty cool. From their front page, "The Digital Divide Network (DDN) is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN, you can build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles. You can also find the archived discussion lists of the DIGITAL DIVIDE listserv. Membership is free and open to all, so join today!" Excellent. Would seem to go nicely hand in hand with the Global Education & Learning Community Curriculum Wiki now dishing curriculum at a web terminal near you. Their mission, from their front page, "is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula, and it's all free!" Excellent times two. Or +1. Or something to that effect.

I'm still trying to decide if the Second Life report on fighting the Front National Party is for, umm... "real" or not. I've dabbled in Second Life and find it interesting. But, good grief... you'd think the whole "shoot anyone you don't agree with" mentality would be less active in an environment where you have to use a well heeled computer desktop to access the environment. Guess not... Taken from the SL blog posting above:

Amidst the comments like, "You can't talk to these guys, that's why I'm standing here shooting them..." I find it amusing that somebody had sense of humor in their attacks... "One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they'd explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel. A few native English speakers joined the fray, though at least one missed the point in either direction, unhelpfully shouting "The French stink! Get out of Second Life!" and the like amid the conflict."

This is a commercial that was produced for internal use at Kodak according to the video description... "It has become so popular, especially with employees, that Kodak has released it for external viewing. It demonstrates that Kodak not only understands it's changing business but also has a sense of humor." Okeedoke. Favorite quotes, "Boo-yeah!" ... "Yup. We shoveled on the shmaltz pretty thick, didn't we?" Makes me think there should be an optional "Shmaltz-o-meter" on your screen(s) to mod up or down the shmaltz of content. Hmm... shmaltz... somehow I'm picturing beer... ah, but of course.

This is a test blog entry.  Had this been an actual blog entry, you would have been informed where to tune your RSS aggregators in your area.  This is only a test blog entry.  8^)  OK, seriously, I am trying out the blogging capability of a browser called Flock.  It is a mozilla/gecko derivative and purports itself to be all about ... "

technorati tags:Flock

OK, it's official. Java Studio Creator 2 is final, it is officially Creator-ed. Get the final bits @ http://developers.sun.com/jscreator/

Also, check out all things Java Studio Creator and AJAX over at http://developers.sun.com/channel, specifically there are goodies and bits on creation of auto-complete, form validation, data refresh, and other dynamic Web app goodness.

Also, don't forget the relevant podcasts, wikis and the like:

The Java Posse, podcasting all things Java -- http://www.javaposse.com/

The NetBeans podcast (Roumen rocks!) -- http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roumen?catname=%2FPodcasts

The NetBeans Module & Platform Development Work-in-Progress Page (Netbeans rocks!) -- http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Netbeans/DeveloperDocumentation

I get asked for this sort of thing a lot, so without further ado...

A free "6-week Java Intro Programming Online Bootcamp" course is about to start from Jan. 16th, 2006. This bootcamp is for anyone who wants to learn Java programming for the first time. In this course, students will learn how to write, compile, and run Java programs. They will also learn essential object oriented programming concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism. Students will write and run the Java programs using both command line tools and NetBeans IDE.

Each week, students are expected to do weekly homework after studying the presentation and hands-on lab material. There is also class group alias where students can ask questions. (We've already secured 23 volunteers who are ready to answer any questions students might have.)

The 1st session of this bootcamp course starts from January 16th, 2006. The only thing you have to do in order to register for the course is sending an email to the following address:

javaintro1-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

For detailed information about this bootcamp, please go to the following websites.

Course website: http://www.javapassion.com/javaintro1

Course schedule: http://www.javapassion.com/javaintro1/Class.html

Course group alias: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/javaintro1/

The kids and I planted a few caladiums earlier on in the season and they're doing quite well. Click on the pictures below if you want the bigger versions. The fun thing about these for me, is they were a freebie handout as we were leaving the garden center last time around. We were at a place called the Grass Pad here in the Kansas City area, checking out with some gardening odds & ends. The checkout lady handed us a bag and said, "Here, try these. They might work, and then again they might not. If they don't work, then at least they were free." Thank you, Grass Pad lady! They worked! 8^)

So, in order for me to grouse about my particular latest experience with tech support, I must first confess my work-from-home setup:

1. a home
2. SBC DSL connect to #1
3. various computers attached to #2 with an eye toward trying to stave off the virus-of-the-hour by running Linux and/or Solaris and/or something other than Windows.
4. A desire to spend "spare time" doing something besides computer admin

I was trying to display a remote X11 installer app to my home system. It's worked before. For some reason, it didn't work today. OK, with #4 firmly in hand, what the heck's going on?

• #2 provided me a little 2Wire gateway, which has a built-in firewall, etc.
• double-check there is indeed an entry in the firewall for X Windows / X11, yup, still there, check...
• double-check that the other than Windows desktop has X11 running and is authorizing the remote system to display locally, check...
• try to run again, and... no joy in Mudville, mighty X11 has struck out

So, time to find out how many levels of tech support this might cost me....

• login to #2's 24x7 help chat, which today only seems to want to work with Internet Explorer. Eeewww.
• #2 tech support advises to either login to 2Wire or call up SBC DSL Support line (thought that's where I was???) so, on to the next level
• SBC DSL Support has a nice enough young lady, to whom I was routed because I chose Macintosh SBC DSL tech support instead of Windows SBC DSL tech support (it was an either/or, there was no "or if you don't think your issue is related to your desktop at all but rather your DSL modem's karma rating" option)
• I had to explain several times, that, no, "X11 / X Windows" doesn't mean I should call the Windows SBC DSL tech support instead of the Macintosh SBC DSL tech support, but rather, this is DSL Modem Firewall question
• after about 45 minutes of her dissappearing to check with a supervisor (total time invested, about 90 minutes thus far), I get that I need to talk to firewall tech support, so please call 415-633-5400 (huh? No 800 number? Hmm...)
• upon using my corporate calling card (this was work related, after all), I'm informed that the number I'm dialing is unavailable, please hold to speak with a specialist (What? A specialist in explaining why I can't use my corporate calling card? OK...)
• the corporate calling card specialist eventually intimates that the number above is a restricted number, and where was I calling to, and what was it about? ("Well, gosh, 415-***-**** would seem to be California, and I'm told this is for SBC DSL Modem Firewall support...")
• I guess I didn't answer correctly, so I'm told, sorry, you can't get there from here
• I incurred the long distance charges to call the above number which turns out to be ZoneLabs (I'm going to guess they have something to do with the firewall built into 2Wire's gateway distributed to SBC DSL users, Macintosh Special Division)
• figured out from the phone menu which option tech support for ZoneLabs was supposed to be and...
• "ZoneLabs" does not accept tech support calls at this time, thank you for calling.

In summary, what used to work just fine now does not, and I'm several hours into the tech support dance, up the ZoneLabs creek without a tech support paddle. In retrospect, I think our SBC DSL person (Macintosh Division) heard "firewall" and automatically sent me over to an unrelated firewall product vendor. My question for the jury is, I'm a geek, what do normal people do? OK, OK, not display X Windows program from remote customer sites to their home office setup, apparently. Good point! 8^)

Kid Stuff for me would be that I am the head of a family of four, including a 5 year old and a 7 year old as of 2004.

I have been trying to keep an eye on something usable on the computer that would engage the creativity and enthusiasm of the 5-10 year old crowd. (I know, I know, the computer is no substitute for playing ball outside in real live sunshine, step... away... from... the... computer... I do encourage that, really!)

There are various JumpStart titles, which are OK. But it's still less creation and more playing a game somebody else wrote. I Found an excellent beginner chess game called Learn to Play Chess with Fritz and Chesster. Online, there's disney, and so forth. Sites like this that use flash to provide "games" are OK and they've certainly come a long way from the dawn of web time.

But... playing canned computer games, even those billed as educational software titles, is not the kind of child brain activity level I had in mind -- I was hacking out BASIC programs on my Atari pre-teen and up. (I was fortunate enough to get to play with the Atari 800 series of computers while growing up, but not fortunate enough to be at the helm of the Atari 800's successor when it came out, the Amiga series) Thus, what kind of authoring / creation environment might have a shot at prying the 5-10 year old crowd away from the Nintendo(s)/PlayStation(s)/GameBoy(s)? "Look kids, see what happens when you type in '10 PRINT HELLO WORLD 20 GOTO 10" likely as not will draw blank stares and fidgeting.... "are we done seeing something cool yet? Can I play Zelda now?" I had thought about REALBasic. Would prefer something that's free or inexpensive, though, which REALBasic basically isn't. And I don't think that's targeted toward a dynabook type of experience, which is what I'm after. That being the case, consider the source...

Have been looking at squeak and the info on squeakland lately. Lots of good things going on with the continuing journey of the original SmallTalk-ers as pertains to childhood education, learning and further attempts to do cool dynabook things. Hit the School Stuff and Kids Play links on squeakland for more info. More to come, hopefully, if the kids can, in fact, be pried away from the game consoles. step... away... from... the... Nintendo...

So, much ado about the Big (Open Source Java Or Not) Question. Were there answers or merely questions? java.net editor-in-chief Daniel Steinberg has a brief write-up. There's also now a Big Question discussion forum in addition to a parallel discussion forum for JSRs.

Sun and IBM and O'Reilly and company were on stage at JavaOne, and I don't know that anything came of it other than everybody got to see those parties on the same stage in a Java forum in which the "open source" topic was discussed in round table mode. If Rod Smith (the author of the open letter from IBM to Sun requesting that Java be open sourced, so we'll assume he represents IBM's position in as much as an individual can represent a company's position) and Gosling/Gingell/O'Reilly/Apache/etc. can't come to agreement while sitting on the same stage, I'm likely as not going to be able to crack that nut here. But, my take is that the real "questions" around open sourcing Java (or not) were placed on the table and then it was time to wrap up:

• how does compatibility and branding, the fundamental promise that Java programs will not be lied to by things claiming to be Java, function when there's a redhat, suse, mandrake, gentoo, purple, green, and orange distro of Java available, some of which don't implement the entire specification? (As Rob Gingell said, "You can not have

  System.checkWithAttorney()

  because code doesn't read trademarks.") Microsoft broke this when they got the Java source code under agreement, and the point of the corresponding multi-year lawyer festival that resulted in, well, lots of job security for lawyers.
• what does "open sourcing Java" mean, and what steps over and above what's already been done? (bug database is public sans internal engineer e-mail addresses, you can go to java.sun.com and find the full source code of J2SE, the JCP allows open source RI's and TCK's if the expert group lead chooses to do so) Is that enough? What else should be done, what does it buy the community, and how do compatibility and branding fare in the additional steps desired?

I would love to see a much longer discussion addressing/debunking these or outlining the "real" issues with maybe a few more parties at the table, but for now the discussion forum will have to suffice for a public discussion on the topic.

-- DanG