You can now earn yourself a BlueJ coffee mug by uploading a resource to the Blueroom.

Since opening this site a few weeks ago, quite a lot of teachers signed up. We’re now more than 230 people here, all in less than four weeks. And there were some interesting discussions. All that is good.

One other area where we hope the Blueroom can help instructors is with sharing of resources. So far, only very few resources have been uploaded.

There may be many reasons for it - you are too busy right now, you think your resource is not really interesting to others, you just want to put some finishing touches to it and didn’t yet get around to do it…

One thing it is not is that there are no resources. We know they are out there. We talk to many BlueJ users and we have seen them!

We know that many of you have a lot of stuff. It can be anything that you use in your BlueJ-related teaching: slides, projects, worksheets, lesson plans, course outlines, videos – anything!

So, to encourage you to upload what you have, we are giving away free BlueJ Coffee Mugs to everyone who uploads a resource to the Blueroom before the end of June!

That is: a free mug, with a BlueJ icon on it, for every person who uploads any resource before end of June!

Call it marketing, or call it bribery. Whatever it is — it is your chance!

And remember: Resources don’t have to be polished or finished or spectacular. The sharing model is a wiki model: the whole community can then help improving, fine-tuning and extending a resource. The important thing is not how perfect it is, the important thing is to get the idea up here in the room. (See also our sharing manifesto.)

So, go and trawl through your teaching folders now and see what you got! Happy uploading.

In less than four days, the Blueroom is up to more than 100 members.

How many people out there use BlueJ?

The answer is: We have no real idea.

We know download numbers, and we know of a good number of institutions who have told us over time that they use BlueJ, so we know you are out there. But when we discussed opening the Blueroom, and whether it would be worth the effort to set up and maintain this site, we were not sure how many teachers would be interested to join up. Would we get enough of an audience?

So far it looks like we needn’t have worried. Only four days in, and we have more than 100 people signed up. It looks like there is sufficient interest out there.

The next question is: Interest in what? Why are you here?

Remember, this site is only as useful as you make it. I expect a good number of you are here to see whether you can find some good resources. That works only if some of you are actually willing to share your resources!

So, please have a think: Do you have a BlueJ assignment that you are using? Some slides? A worksheet? Assignment ideas? A lesson plan?

Any of that would probably be of great interest to other educators, so please, upload it here. I am very aware that many of you think your material is not quite ready, not polished enough, not finished. But please, upload it anyway! Seriously, if you wait for it to be finished, we will never see it.

It is better to post something raw than not post at all!

For now: Welcome, and nice to see you all here!

Annual BlueJ download numbers have increased to over 2.5 million for 2010. A huge increase - and we have no idea why.

Since 2001, we have been monitoring downloads of BlueJ from our server, bluej.org. So far, download numbers have increased every year, sometimes by significant amounts. We often had growth rates of 20 to 40%.

Last year, however, has been unusual. We saw an increase in downloads of 80%! And we have no real idea where this comes from.

Ever since we started distributing BlueJ, we expected growth to level out at some stage. Some time, we thought, we must reach a saturation point.

Well, it looks like we’re not at that point yet.

Welcome to the new Blueroom. To make it work, your help is needed. It is what you make of it!

With the Blueroom, we have created a new platform that allows you to share resources and have discussions. Whether this is useful will depend entirely on you!

As we all know, the usefulness of a community site stands or falls with the content: as long as there is nothing here, it’s a waste of space, and then people don’t come back, and then there’s nothing here. The typical vicious circle.

On the other hand, if people post resources and have interesting discussions, then other instructors might come back, add more interesting questions and discussions, etc. Over the next few weeks or months we will see whether we can lift this off the ground to reach critical mass to make this an interesting site.

Whether this will be an interesting site depends on you. Don’t wait for ‘the others’ to start a discussion, or to post something - just do it. There is no ‘them’, there is only ‘us’.

The resource model on this site is based on a wiki editing model: Resources are not owned by their creator, they are owned by the community. Once a resource is there, anyone can edit it. So please do! If you see something where you can make an improvement — do it! Fix an error, add an improvement, add a comment or some feedback, make translations — whatever you can do.

Also, if you have your own BlueJ teaching material — exercises, slides, project ideas, anything — please post them here. Others will be grateful.

So, let’s see whether we can manage together to create some interesting content and make this site useful to us as a teaching community.

Again, welcome, and please do participate!

Michael

The Blueroom has now opened its doors. Welcome! We hope you find the site useful, and if you have any troubles, please get in touch.

The Blueroom has been developed by the team behind BlueJ to support teachers who are using BlueJ, by allowing them to get together, talk, and share materials.