Sept. 6, 2006 Project Leader Forum

Participants:

  • David Epstein, davidepstein at dev dot java dot net, project leader of JJPod, JJStick, APCSTeacherJavaResourceCD, JavaStickUSB
  • Vitor Souza, vitorsouza at dev dot java dot net, project leader of JSchool and ESJUG
  • Barbara Bauer, btbauer1 at msn dot com, Global Text Project, Teachers Across Borders, U. of Colorado Engineering Outreach
  • Joshua Marks, joshuamarks at sbcglobal dot net, GELC CTO
  • Bobbi Kurshan, bkurshan at dev dot java dot net, GELC Executive Director
  • Rob Stephenson, rstephe at dev dot java dot net, GELC Community Manager

Discussion

Rob Stephenson open the call by describing the GELC's new mission of providing "open source curricula" to teachers and students around the world, especially in grades K-12. The GELC is developing a new Website to serve this audience. The GELC is therefore especially interested in:

  • Java.net projects creating open educational content for teaching Java, computer science, math, science or languages at the K-12 or even college level, and
  • Java developers interested in volunteering to work on the new Website.
Joshua Marks explained that the beta Website is based on XWiki, a Java-based wiki that can be scripted with Velocity or Groovy (see links below). He pointed out that more details on both the present site and plans for future improvements are available in the Draft Technology Roadmap and Phase One Design document (warning, this is not a quick read - ed.).

Barbara Bauer (not a Java.net member) mentioned three projects she is involved in: Global Text, Teachers Across Borders, and TeachEngineering at U. of Colorado Boulder. The Global Text Project is developing open textbooks, including one on XML. A sample excerpt of that is available on the GELC beta site. Rob Stephenson mentioned that the XML code snippets in that excerpt had disappeared, and needed to be escaped.

Teachers Across Borders is an international teacher-to-teacher program, sort of like an NGO teachers' Peace Corps. They are focused primarily on Cambodia. Rob mentioned that Fred Mednick's similarly named Teachers Without Borders has an also similar model, and that there might be synergies between them.

The TeachEngineering project is a national project to align engineering materials with the grades 3-12 math and science curriculum and standards in a number of different states. Barbara is trying to find resources to convert the existing curriculum assets to the GELC xwiki platform, and to find funding for a remote trial, either nationally or internationally.

Vitor Souza described his JSchool project to build an educational collaboration platform for members of the http://esjug.dev.java.net/ Espírito Santo Java User Group (ESJUG), a Java Users Group in Brazil's Espírito Santo state. The platform would include scheduling, file sharing, forums and email, and its construction would be a learning exercise for the JUG members. Joshua pointed out that those features were already part of the XWiki platform the GELC has adopted, and suggested that - rather than reinventing the wheel - ESJUG members could contribute to the new GELC site. This would involve both J2EE development and scripting in Groovy and Velocity, and would give them excellent, real-world, hands-on experience. Vitor will discuss this with his fellow JUG members.

David Epstein described his JJ2 portable IDE for Java students. It includes a Web browser that allows students to highlight a Java code snippet on a Web page and, with one click, run it directly in the IDE. This and much more are part of his APCSTeacherJavaResourceCD. His JJPod and JavaStickUSB projects (now renamed and combined as JJStick) allow students to learn to use Java APIs by scripting their iPod or java cellphone. They can, for example, write a program to download the lyrics for songs on their iPod to the iPod's Note folder, so they can read the lyrics offline as they play songs. They can also download lessons in the same way. Joshua mentioned that a big priority for Ludovic Dubost and the other XWiki developers at http://xwiki.org was developing a p2p network that would allow downloading xwiki content and editing it offline. David said that, with the exception of the p2p network, these were capabilities his software had now.

Bobbi Kurshan appealed for more open content and tools of this sort, especially for teaching Java. She urged Java developers to contribute to making the new GELC Website a powerful tool for collaboration, and easy for teachers and students to use.

More Details on the Projects Mentioned

JSchool

https://jschool.dev.java.net/ "This project aims to build a collaborative learning environment for schools and universities. The idea is to offer an infrastructure that allows teachers and students to create groups based on classes or subjects of interest and provide a set of tools that could help promote collaborative learning.

"This project begins at the Espírito Santo Java User Group (ESJUG). The goal is twofold: building the first version of JSchool and provide an opportunity for JUG members to participate in a medium-sized open-source Java EE project and build a Web Application using frameworks."

APCSTeacherJavaResourceCD

https://apcsteacherjavaresourcecd.dev.java.net/ A Resource CD for all Java CS Teachers - especially those teaching the high school advanded placement curriculum (for which Java is now the official programming language in the US). The CD includes nearly all the necessary resources: the JDK, a choice of IDEs, problems, examples, documentation and several complete textbooks.

JavaStickUSB

https://javastickusb.dev.java.net/ "With the JavaStick USB, your Java programs travel with you, in your pocket. Just plug it in and start learning today from Java education experts." (see also http://www.javastick.com/, JavaStick is a commercial project).

JJPod

https://jjpod.dev.java.net/ "The jjPod Project connects Java students, teachers and programmers with users of iPods, mp3 players and cell phones. The jjPod APIs allow Java code to interact with folders found on portable storage devices, such as the Notes folder on the iPod. Unlike most Java APIs, the jjPod APIs are designed to be simple enough for novice Java programmers. Specifically, in the first few weeks of an introductory computer science course, a student could easily read and write powerful Java programs using jjPod APIs." (see also http://jjpod.org)

JJStick

https://jjstick.dev.java.net/ "jjstick is a combination of the JJ2 portable Java IDE together with online Java educational materials. Students can write and run Java programs from any computer that has JJ2 installed or can recognize a USB stick, iPod or cell phone. Online Java materials can be cached on the stick, thus removing dependency on the Internet, except for the delivery (download) of "JJ2 project" lessons/lab files. JJ2 was developed by the JJ Dream Team students, and PSVM teachers. The online materials can be developed by anybody. JJ2 has an integrated browser, with ability to run code selected (highlighted, scrapped) from online or cached html web pages. The jjstick APIs provide beginners the opportunity to write simple yet meaningful programs that interact with folders found on an iPod (and many MP3 players and cell phones) such as Notes, Music and Photos. For example, as soon as students learn about String arrays, they can write a Lyrics Grabber: (1) call an API to grab music information, (2) call an API to search the Internet for song lyrics, or create a url for a lyrics wiki, (3) write the song lyrics to a Notes folder file. The user of such a program can read song lyrics while listening to their iPod. The challenge for students is to think about and organize Notes files appropriately." This is a new project, created shortly after the 9/6 call.

Elluminate Online Conference Facility

For the benefit of our international participants, this call used the GELC's new Elluminate online conference facility. Elluminate is a Web conferencing platform that supports voice, chat, whiteboard and desktop sharing, among other things. It is a Java Web Start app that should run on any platform that supports the JRE (it also requires a headset, or a microphone and earphone). I suggest you try it out ahead of time to download the .jar files and try it out. For instructions and more information, go to http://beta.gelc.org/Elluminate.

For anyone who needs to dial in, you can also participate through our conference call number: PHONE: 866.545.5227 (US, toll-free), INTL PHONE: +1.865.673.6590 (international, a toll call), PCODE: 6933155#.