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Curriki Adds Free Oracle Java Curriculum

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/22/13

Oracle has begun putting its programming training materials onto a Web site used by educators around the world. The company's Academy, which provides resources for secondary and higher education, has made its curriculum, Getting Started with Java Using Alice, available on Curriki. Curriki is a non-profit K-12 community where people share and find free and open educational resources.

Alice is a development platform created by Carnegie Mellon University to teach students computing programming in a 3D environment by dragging and dropping graphic tiles that create standard Java programming statements. The Alice materials from Oracle's education organization, Oracle Academy, include eight hours of instruction to teach basic Java programming concepts in the course of creating animated stories, movies, and games.

Oracle's Java curriculum for students includes three other titles that aren't yet available on the Curriki site: Creating Java Programs with Greenfoot, Java Fundamentals, and Java Programming. All four sets of lessons align with Oracle certification and the United States Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam.

"In classrooms around the world, Alice software has engaged students in computer programming, demonstrating that it can be creative and fun," said Wanda Dann, director of the Alice Project. "We are excited that this learning experience will be expanded to far more students, thanks to the efforts of the Oracle Academy and Curriki."

Added Curriki CEO Kim Jones, "Computer science and heuristic thinking are the foundations of our information and technology-based society. We are thrilled that Oracle is helping to foster a new generation of software developers and problem solvers to face the pressing challenges of the twenty-first century by releasing this course on Java through Curriki. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with Oracle Academy in the future."