What is Greenfoot? Well, you read one of the papers written about Greenfoot, but that’s not fun. (They’re good papers though; you should read them. ) Besides, it’s such a visual environment, we should be able to do better than that!

The screenshots give you a good idea as to the diversity of microworlds you can explore, in Java, using Greenfoot. My purpose in starting this weblog was to explore, in public, discoveries made while programming in the environment, as well as my thoughts about how I could imagine teaching and learning with it in the classroom. In my explorations, I’ll try and augment the screenshots we have with some video clips, to give you a sense of just how neat these virtual worlds are when they’re in motion. (You could, of course, download Greenfoot and explore this for yourself…)

Keep in mind that Greenfoot is currently a moving target; however, the Greenfoot team is working hard to put the shine on every aspect of the software, and bring it to a full version 1.0 release. We’re pretty excited, because right now Poul Henriksen, Michael Kölling, and Davin McCall (visiting from Deakin University in Australia) are all at Kent, meaning that things are moving along very quickly. While it is true that BlueJ is now maintained by a distributed team (at both Kent and Deakin), there are huge advantages during the early stages of a project to having everyone in the same place!

(In case that was confusing, Poul and Michael are usually at Kent, except for when they’re traveling, in which case, they’re not. But it is not surprising that they’re at the University of Kent. Or perhaps it is. But it isn’t meant to be surprising. Did that make sense?)

So when will Greenfoot be officially released? The “Big 1.0″? Perhaps you should keep reading this weblog, and find out…