Sub Ubi

Michael posted a complete gallery of photos from the contest on the Greenfoot site. He did not, however, capture our top winner in a reflective, contemplative pose:

“I can beat that guy…”

Joe Coglianese showed that professors from big-name Universities have to get to work on their Greenfoot chops pretty early in the morning if they’re going to beat a hard-hitting high-school teacher. The competition was great, really–it was so much fun to see people hacking, submitting, tweaking, submitting… trying to get their Greeps to exhibit that critical bit of emergent behavior that would score more tomatoes than anyone else.

Our winner, observing from afar… sneaky.

It was impressive how many people were drawn to the Sun booth by Greenfoot; I like to think that the combination of the activity and Sun’s presence fed off of each-other very nicely. Some people came by to find out what Sun had going on, and some came by to see Greenfoot–and they usually asked questions about both. That was cool, although from time-to-time I found myself answering questions about OpenJDK, the J2ME stack, JavaDB, and OpenSolaris. (Yes, you can run OpenSolaris in a VMWare virtual machine.)

And it was also very cool to talk to people about the ideas they had for teaching with Greenfoot. So many people were coming up with such cool ideas for how they wanted to get students playing with this environment. I’m hoping they find their way back and share some of their stories, as I’d very much like to do some interviews, ask questions, showcase student work, etc. in this space. The more we share with each-other regarding our use of Greenfoot in pedagogic contexts, the more we all benefit.

Why? Because Greenfoot is amazing. See? Look. This next photo proves it:

Greenfoot is amazing

LOOK AT THAT! Look at how amazed I am by Greenfoot! Mercy. I can’t be more amazed than that. Michael is amazed too, which you can tell even from his back–look at how excited his shoulders are! Ian (left) isn’t all that amazed, but that’s because he used to program in Postscript, and is now scarred for life. However, there are people in the background who are about to be as amazed as I am, but they’re slow on the uptake. Dennis (behind me) in particular: not terribly observant, that one. In a moment, he passes out from the excitement of Greenfoot. He gives new meaning to the words “completely floored.” Really, Greenfoot is absolutely amazing, it is.

…

(I did not pose for that picture, and I did not have to ask Poul to take it several times before we got just the right expession of amazement on my face. That was a completely natural, un-planned expression of just how amazing Greenfoot is. Really.)

(And yes, I had fun writing this post.)