The 2002 edition of the Rice University TeachJava workshop will be
offered August 5-9.  The workshop is targeted at teachers who have
completed the TeachScheme workshop but is open to others with an
strong background in computing on a case by case basis.  Enrollment
is limited to 20 students so that we can provide extensive individual
instruction.  The workshop covers the principal programming concepts
taught in the second-semester (CS2) course at Rice.  The course
presumes a background in designing functional programs as taught
in the TeachScheme workshop (see www.teach-scheme.org).  With this
background, it is easy to learn object-oriented program design.

I am pleased to report that the workshop will be supported by an
improved "production-quality" version of DrJava, which is now an
open-source project at drjava.sourceforge.net.  DrJava supports the
same simple programming interface as DrScheme: a Definitions pane
containing program text and an Interactions pane in which arbitrary
statements and expressions can be cumulatively evaluated.  The usual
complication of teaching students to define a method with the
header

public static void main(String[] args)

to execute programs is completely unnecessary (although DrJava also
supports the usual command line interface in the Interactions pane if
you want to use it).  The improved version of DrJava already supports
many features that were not available last year including multiple
open files, killing errant computations, and source file printing.

The development of DrJava is proceeding rapidly using the Extreme
Programming approach to software engineering (see
http://www.jera.com/techinfo/xpfaq.html).  By the time of the
workshop, we expect DrJava to include a debugger, integrated support
for unit testing based on JUnit, and a configuration facility for
changing environment parameters such as font size, text highlighting
colors, and the classpath used to search for external classes.

The TeachJava workshop is free and we expect to cover the costs of
some meals but participants will be responsible for covering their
travel expenses.  For more information on the workshop including
instructions on how to apply for admission, see www.teachjava.org.

-- Robert "Corky" Cartwright
   Dung "Zung" Nguyen
   Stephen Wong
   Rice University