In the meanwhile I will experiment using Ucigame lib in an other window.

Great.

If you clone the kojo repo and start pushing your enhancements back into your clone, I can see what you're upto and maybe help…
Some related info here:
http://code.google.com/p/kojo/source/browse/Build.txt

Thanks for all the pointers.

I want to switch this year with scala as langage and Kojo as IDE.

That is great to hear! Let me know if you need any help with this…

I would really enjoy an good API sprites games in Kojo.

I think we have two options here:
- extend the Staging API to enable the creation of games. Most of the elements are already in there. The one big thing that is missing is collision detection.
- have another window for games (using a games library like Ucigame)

I personally prefer the first option, if we can get it to work in a satisfactory manner. But I'm open to the idea of the second option.

This is an area of a lot of interest for me, but I don't see myself getting time to tackle this in the near future (I'll possibly get to this by the end of the year). If someone else wants to work on this before then, I would love to help.

Cheers,
- Lalit

Anyway, thanks you for making Kojo available, it's a great environment for teaching kids how to program. I teach physics (with electronics and computer science stuff) in a French high school in Paris. I've used differents langages and environments (pascal, C, python, smalltalk Squeak,DrRacket scheme) during the 10 last years but I want to switch this year with scala as langage and Kojo as IDE.

From my experience when teaching programming to kids (secondary school, 13-18 years old) you need:

1. a good langage:
- a simple and concise syntax (scheme,smalltalk, python and scala are good)
- algebraic notation like usual math notation (python, scala)
- real functional programming is an advantage since many concepts are already seen in math (scheme, scala, python)
- high level data collections as list, set, dictonary (hash table)(scheme,smalltalk, python, scala)

2. a good environment:
- an interactive Read-Eval-Print Loop (scheme,smalltalk, python, scala)
- friendly debug system, stepping… (DrRacket scheme, Squeak, Greenfoot)

3. Fun: graphics programs, drawings, sprites games (DrRacket, Squeak, Greenfoot, Kojo)

Bonus:
- interactive geometry with integration of geogebra (Kojo, Mathpiper)
- C.A.S. Computer Algebra System (Mathpiper)

Considering both the langage and the environment, Kojo is a great chalenger.
In my point of view, inspiring environments for kojo would be:

DrRacket:
http://racket-lang.org/
http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html
http://world.cs.brown.edu/
http://www.htdp.org/

Greenfoot:
http://www.greenfoot.org/

Mathpiper: (interactive geometry and computer algebra system in a functional programming langage).
http://www.mathpiper.org/

Xavier Coolen.