BlueJ - an interactive Java learning environment

One of my Twitter correspondents posted this a few weeks back, and I've been meaning to blog about it.

"The BlueJ environment was developed as part of a university research project about teaching object-orientation to beginners. The system is being developed and maintained by a joint research group at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. The project is supported by Sun Microsystems.

The aim of BlueJ is to provide an easy-to-use teaching environment for the Java language that facilitates the teaching of Java to first year students. Special emphasis has been placed on visualisation and interaction techniques to create a highly interactive environment that encourages experimentation and exploration.

BlueJ is based on the Blue system. Blue is an integrated teaching environment and language, developed at the University of Sydney and Monash University, Australia. BlueJ provides a Blue-like environment for the Java language.

The BlueJ project started at Monash University in Melbourne, and later split and migrated to its current locations.

BlueJ is implemented in Java, and regularly being tested on Solaris, Linux, Macintosh, and various Windows versions. It should run on all platforms supporting a recent Java virtual machine."

Check it out here.