Java Learning Group

Welcome to our site!

1.Who Are We

Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto - Porto - Portugal
Filipe Pacheco & Nuno Morgado

Universidad de Vigo - Vigo - Spain
J. Burguillo & Manuel Caeiro

Karel de Grote Hogeschool - Hoboken - Belgium
Dimirti Powels & Rudy Pont

Université des Sciences et Techinques de Lille Flandre-Artois - Lille - France
Brigitte Cantegrit & Pochet Remi

2. Objectives

Main Goal: Create an Interactive Java Teaching Platform

Collaborative Development: Using the BSCW Server and E-mail exchange of information.

Web Based:  To allow for easy access by future users.

Easy Custom Extensions: To create new demos the user just needs to create a new Java class for and particular example.

Step by step interactive execution: So final user can see the program executing. Possible change of values and/or conditions to be looked for. 

Text Output or Graphical Components: The final platforms (or platforms) should support either a text output application simulator (using System.out.println) or and graphical interactive application (using graphical components like AWT or Swing) demo.

3. Results

We have three simple demos, showing our views to achive the objectives proposed. our solutions require that an custom class should be created for each example:

First Running Example: shows our first proof-of-concept applet with an brief introduction to Java.

Graphical Simulator : A simple example using the graphical interactive platform. This platform has some problems but given it's complexity it's a very good start. In the example you can see an Metric to U.S. System unit converter working. To interact with the example class this simulator requires calls to a platform method in each breakpoint.

Text Output Simulator : An object creation example using the text output platform. This platform is more stable but also more simple than the previous one. The example shows the usage of classes and sub-classes. To interact with the example class this simulator calls an specific method in the class at each breakpoint. The class sould use the platform methods to change and access visible variables.

4.What Next?

Both platforms have space for future improvments, some are listed here:

Graphical Simulator: Better support of events, variable watch, support of more graphical components.

Both Platforms: changing variables and constants in the code. Breakpoints and more flexible "debugging" modes. Support of parameters in HTML code and dinamic loading of example class.

5.Barcelona Meeting Presentation

To slides of our presentation in Barcelona are available in ZIP Archive (aprox. 250 kb) with PowerPoint 95/97 File.