STEP Training
MIT STEP offers a teacher licensing program that can be done entirely at MIT or in conjunction with courses at Wellesley College. This program licenses students to teach mathematics or science in grades 5-12. The Scheller Teacher Education Program, offered through the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, prepares MIT students to become teachers who are competent to teach in their field, willing to challenge established norms, able to bridge the boundaries among disciplines, and eager to help students develop the desire to question and explore. Click here for more info on STEP and here for more info on classes.
For Educators
STEP is actively engaged in many research and development projects, designing and testing new learning technologies for use in formal and informal education. While some projects are in limited testing with partners, others are freely available for all to try and to use (some complete with curriculum and assessment). Find out more about these projects on the projects page.
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Open Blocks Download Page
This is the download page for OpenBlocks, an open-source Java library for creating blocks-based programming UIs. OpenBlocks consists of two packages: codeblocks and slcodeblocks. Codeblocks is the basic underlying library that is responsible for most of the functionality. We will periodically release updates to this library. Slcodeblocks is code from our project, StarLogo TNG, that uses and extends our codeblocks library to fully implement StarLogo TNG's UI. The source is provided for reference, but we will not maintain these files. Additionally, we have removed SLBlockCompiler.java, SL_Command.java, lang_def.xml, and commands_slc.slb, all of which are required to run slcodeblocks fully. We hope to provide sample replacements for these files as soon as we can.
UPDATE: We have created a sample Eclipse project using OpenBlocks and attached it below. It has a sample lang_def.xml file included, so it can generate and display a set of drawers full of commands. It also has Javadocs in the doc/Javadocs folder.
To run the project, run the main() method in src/controller/WorkspaceController.
We also noticed that mikaelhg has started a refactoring branch of this code on github. We thank him and hope that others will consider requesting permission to contribute to his efforts.
Support
OpenBlocks is no longer under development at MIT STEP (we are focusing our efforts on a new web-based blocks library called ScriptBlocks), but we have created a Google Group for questions and support. We are members of the group and will answer questions when we can. Other community members may also answer questions, which increases the quality of support for the whole community. Check out the group at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openblocks.
Our libraries depend upon (and include) JFreeChart, JCommon, and TableLayout. You can view their licenses and download them at their respective websites:
http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/
https://tablelayout.dev.java.net/
By downloading this software, you are agreeing to the terms of the license, as follows:
MIT LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2009
MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program
Eric Klopfer, Daniel Wendel, Ricarose Roque, Corey McCaffrey, Lunduo Ye, Aidan Ho, Brett Warne, Xudan Liu, Hout Nga
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software, including both runtime and source versions.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| codeblocks.zip | 1.98 MB |
| slcodeblocks.zip | 2 MB |
| OpenBlocksProject.zip | 3.92 MB |