Featured Ebook: Adventures with Kojo, Level 1. Learn more...
Kojo is an open source App that runs on Linux, Windows, and the Mac. It is a Learning Environment - with many different features that enable play, exploration, creation, and learning in the areas of:
- Computer Programming
- Math and Science
- Systematic and Computational Thinking
- Art, Music, and Creative Thinking
- Computer and Internet Literacy
- Electronics and Robotics
To play with Kojo, you can Download and Install it. Or you can run it Online.
The Kojo Overview Story tells you more about Kojo (you need to have Java 6 or later installed to view the Story).
The Kalpana Center Page describes the thinking behind the use of Kojo in Education.
Kojo builds upon these ideas and provides the following:
- A productive, fun, and friendly graphical environment - where computer programming is used to explore and play with Math, Art, Music, Animations, and Games.
- A point-and-click visual programming facility to make it easy to get started, with full support for text based programming for more advanced usage.
- Turtle graphics, for an intuitive beginning.
- Program Tracing to help understand how programs work.
- Pictures, which take turtle graphics to the next level, to create rich shapes that can be used in animations and games.
- Support for Arduino programming.
- Stories, to author creative works - using programs, text, images, sound, and music.
- Support for the composition and playing of computer generated music, and for MP3 music playback.
- A virtual Math Lab (based on Geogebra) with good support for both Algebra and Geometry.
- An Arithmic Aerobics area that helps children practice and build up their math calculation skills.
- Powerful support (based on Stories) for authoring rich, interactive learning material.
- A modern, powerful, programming language called Scala to work with. You begin with a very small and simple subset of Scala, and progress to the level of Scala proficiency that you care to reach.
- Features like syntax highlighting, code completion, and code templates to make programming friendlier.
- Multi-language capability. English, Swedish, French, Polish, and Dutch are supported, with more to follow.
Kojo is also a useful tool for Scala programming in general, as it provides a powerful REPL for Scala - with the following features:
- Syntax Highlighting
- Code completion
- Worksheet support in the script editor (for inline viewing of expression results)
- Program Tracing
- Searchable script history
- Object Inspection
- AST Browsing
- Saving/Loading of scripts
- Customizable Classpath - to enable experimentation with any Scala or Java class-library
- Other bells and whistles
Kojo can be freely downloaded from The Kojo download page