Join us for the next live session, where we will talk about what is going on at Greenfoot development level.

We don’t generally have a fixed script for the LIVE sessions, but one of the topics we will talk about this week is what is going on at the Greenfoot’s development level.

Join us live on

Monday, 19 June 2017, at 5pm UK time (GMT + 1)

to find out more. You can join the broadcast here. (You can also bookmark this link – it will stay the same for all future Greenfoot LIVE sessions.)

Recordings of these events are accessible for viewing retrospectively at our channel.

Greenfoot is 11 today - getting into teenage years.

It sounds like a very long time ago: Greenfoot 1.0 was released exactly 11 years ago today, on 31 May 2006.

The project has come a long way since then. Many people have worked on it, and many more teachers have helped with creating material, using it in classrooms and providing feedback. Greenfoot continues to be developed, adapted and improved - so here is to the next 11 years!

Join us for the next live session, where we will talk about exporting to JavaScript.

We don’t generally have a fixed script for the LIVE sessions, but one of the topics we will talk about this week is the replacement of applets on the Greenfoot website with JavaScript versions, and the related opportunity of running Greenfoot scenarios on mobile devices.

Join us live on

Monday, 5 June 2017, at 5pm UK time (GMT + 1)

to find out more. You can join the broadcast here. (You can also bookmark this link – it will stay the same for all future Greenfoot LIVE sessions.)

Monday, 22 May 2017, at 5pm UK time (GMT + 1)

Greenfoot Live

Programming Education Chat With The Greenfoot Team

Greenfoot Live started on 8 May and will be every two weeks. The second one will be on 22 May.

Greenfoot Live will be a regular chat event where members of the Greenfoot team will be live online and talk about Greenfoot, among ourselves and with you – the users of Greenfoot. The event is aimed mostly at teachers who use Greenfoot in their classes, but also at general Greenfoot users.

We will discuss educational aspects, as well as general programming topics, related to Greenfoot.

You will have a chance to listen to us talk, as well as ask questions.

Save the date

2nd Greenfoot Live event will be held on Monday, 22 May 2017, at 5pm UK time (GMT + 1)

Recordings of these events are accessible for viewing retrospectively at our channel.

To join the event, please visit this link where you can also set a reminder.

Don’t forget to mark this date in your diary and join us!

Join us for Greenfoot Live on 8 May 2017.

Greenfoot Live

Programming Education Chat With The Greenfoot Team

Greenfoot Live will be a regular chat event where members of the Greenfoot team will be live online and talk about Greenfoot, among ourselves and with you – the users of Greenfoot. The event is aimed mostly at teachers who use Greenfoot in their classes, but also at general Greenfoot users.

We will discuss educational aspects, as well as general programming topics, related to Greenfoot.

You will have a chance to listen to us talk, as well as ask questions.

Save the date

The first Greenfoot Live event will be held on

Monday, 8 May 2017, at 5pm UK time

That is

• 4pm GMT
• 9am in San Francisco
• 12noon in New York
• 18:00 in Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, France, …
• 2am in Sydney (sorry…)

After this first event on 8 May, we will host Greenfoot Live every two weeks. Recordings of these events will be accessible afterwards for viewing retrospectively.

To join the event, please visit this link where you can also set a reminder.

Don’t forget to mark this date in your diary with a big red pen and join us in a couple of weeks!

Greenfoot 3 has been released – the biggest change in Greenfoot since its original release.

This version of Greenfoot adds the Stride language and its frame-based editor to Greenfoot.

Java editing, as we know it, is not gone: Java and its old editor are still present, and we expect that many people will still use Greenfoot with Java. Greenfoot 3 was carefully designed so that existing teaching material is still usable and existing instructions and tutorials continue to work.

There is, however, now the added ability to write classes in Stride. Stride is a Java-like language, and its attraction lies not so much in language features, but in its unique frame editor: Half way between blocks and text, it makes the entry into programming much easier than it ever was before with an essentially text based system. It also eases the transition for learners coming from block-based systems, such as Scratch, Snap or Alice.

The transition from blocks to text is a very pressing problem for many teachers at the moment, and it is frequently discussed at computing education conferences. Several research groups are working on addressing this issue.

Where most other systems, however, support the transition by providing a dual system – code can be shown as blocks or as text, with transitions between them – Stride goes a different way: Instead of having two views to compare, Stride provides a single system that offers the main benefits of both blocks and text in a single interface.

In doing this, Stride is uniquely placed to offer a new way to teach young learners who want to move on to full text-based languages.

To get a first impression of frame-based editing, you can read this short description.

And better still, download Greenfoot 3 and try it out yourself!

Happy programming,

Your Greenfoot Team

Greenfoot 3 is nearing final release. Get the Greenfoot 3 preview now, see what is new, and help us with testing.

Greenfoot 3 preview 2 is out now, and you can download it and try it out.

Greenfoot 3, with its addition of the Stride language and frame based editor for early introduction of programming, adds fundamentally new ways how you could introduce programming to beginners.

Try it now to see what your instruction could look like soon.

To get you started with Stride, we have a new worksheet - Meet The Greeps - and a few Stride version of some of our favourite scenarios here:

• Little Crab
• FatCat
• WBC

We would also welcome testing of existing, Java-based scenarios to make sure Greenfoot 3 continues to work well with all existing code and teaching material. So run your own scenarios with Greenfoot 3, and tell us how is goes.

You can post any feedback in this discussion thread.

Let us know what you think!

The Greenfoot Team

Greenfoot 2.4 is now part of the Rasbperry Pi distro!

If you thought you need a fancy computer to get cracking on your Greenfoot programming, think again!

With just a Raspberry Pi B+ or Raspberry Pi 2, you can already start developing your games right away! Just type in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install greenfoot    

and it is availabe in the start menu!

Fancy a new editing paradigm?

We have just released the second version of Greenfoot 3 Preview.

This version provides many new features and functionalities, besides a lot of bug fixes.

An explanation of frame-based editing, and more information on our new editor, is available here.

You can get Greenfoot 3 Preview 2 here.

The second edition of the Greenfoot book is out now.

For this edition, the book has been significantly extended and improved. Several new chapters were added, more scenarios are introduced, and every chapter received a “Drill and Practice” section to reinforce the concepts learned.

These changes - together with many other improvements - make this an exciting new edition.

See more details here.

Greenfoot 2.4.1 has been released. You can download it for all platforms.

This is primary a maintenance release with bugfixes, but it also includes a new Greenfoot.ask() method that allows you to request string input from the user.

Get it while it’s fresh.

We have just released a new version of Greenfoot, version 2.4.

This version provides a number of bug fixes, and some functionality improvements.

The improvements include some new helper classes (which you can import into your scenario via the Edit/Import Class… menu). These classes make it easy to, for example, get live weather information, or access Google maps as the background image of your scenario. We will publish some more detail about how to use these shortly.

Text output has also been simplified, with a new showText method in the World class.

You can get Greenfoot 2.4 here.

The next release of Greenfoot, version 2.4, is now in final testing and just about ready for release.

We have been working on this version for a while, and spent the last few weeks testing and preparing the release. So if you are planning to install software in your school’s lab over summer – hold on for a few more days and wait for Greenfoot 2.4.

The new version will have a good list of small improvements. It presents not a radical overhaul, but many small, incremental steps forward.

New features include new API methods, interface improvements, and some new, built-in helper classes.

We will tell you the details shortly. Watch this space.

Silicon Valley Code Camp is a FREE code camp geared towards professional developers. We are introducing a new kids track this year with 4 hands-on workshops on Greenfoot by none other than Neil Brown.

The specific sessions are:

Build a chase game in Greenfoot (2-part hands-on workshop) http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Session/2013/building-a-chase-game-in-greenfoot-part-1 http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Session/2013/building-a-chase-game-in-greenfoot-part-2

Build a platforming game in Greenfoot (2-part hands-on workshop) http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Session/2013/building-a-platforming-game-in-greenfoot-part-1 http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Session/2013/building-a-platforming-game-in-greenfoot-part-2

See the complete agenda at:

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Track/2013/kids

Join us if you can.

The BlueJ/Greenfoot team are currently looking to hire new two team members. We are inviting applications until the 19th December. You can view the official job description and apply online, while one of our existing team members, Neil Brown, has written a more informal description of the job and the team.

The job is an interesting mixture of software development and academic research into computer education. BlueJ is used by several million users worldwide, and has an interesting web-scale data collection project being developed, while Greenfoot is a fast-growing fun visual educational system for kids with new ideas in the pipeline. Not to mention our teacher community websites, such as this one!

If you have any questions about the position then please feel free to contact any of the BlueJ team – Michael can be reached at mik@kent.ac.uk.