Google Tech Talks March, 7 2008 ABSTRACT Learning to code has become both more important and more complicated in the last decade. We need to make it attractive and easy again. Most western countries currently experience a shortage of skilled computing professionals in the employment market. We have seen a similar problem in the 1990s, but this time the situation is different: While the problem in the 90s was university capacity (we just couldn’t educate enough people quickly enough), this time around it is enrolment: Universities have the capacity, but not enough students sign up to study technical, computing related subjects, such as computer science or software engineering. The real problem lies before university: at school age, students decide against computing as a subject, because it is perceived as geeky, tedious, intellectually not challenging, and most of all boring. At the same time, programming in schools is on a sharp decline. We need to counter this trend by bringing programming back into schools, and make it an engaging, challenging, relevant and enjoyable activity. To be successful, the public sector, academia and business should work together to make this happen. At the University of Kent, we have developed two successful development environments, named BlueJ and Greenfoot, and educational material to address these challenges. In this presentation, we will discuss both, with the main focus on Greenfoot, a system for beginners to learn Java programming …
