Jorma Sajaniemi from the University of Joensuu (Finland) has done some very interesting work on the roles of variables, and how they can be used in teaching introductory programming. Craig Bishop and Colin Johnson at the University of Kent have produced a BlueJ extension which allows variables to be annotated with their role name, and then checks conformance. Download it, along with documentation and source code, from the extensions page.

We have replaced the bluej-discuss mailing list with a web-based discussion forum, hosted at Google Groups. This will still allow you to read and post to the list via email, if you wish, but also gives us a web interface, archives, threaded display, and RSS.

Have a look at the new bluej-discuss.

Have you heard about Greenfoot?

If not - surf over to the Greenfoot web site and have a look. Greenfoot is a new development environment, built by the BlueJ team.

Greenfoot is great for building graphical interactive applications (such as games and simulations) very easily and quickly. In Java. And it's free.

Greenfoot is aimed at bringing programming into high schools and university entry courses, but it can really do much more than that. Have a look.