Kojo @ Lund University

The Kojo effort at Lund University is led by Bjorn Regnell, a professor in Software Engineering. Bjorn is a big fan of Scala, and has been a key contributor to the Kojo effort over the past many years. He is currently engaged in introducing Scala as a first programming language for computer science students at the faculty of engineering LTH (and they use Kojo in the first few sessions to get going). He also works with LTH’s Science Center where school teachers and kids learn about programming using Kojo and Scala. The following are some past numbers from the Science Center:

• 2015 – 5,000 kids explored coding/STEM with Kojo Kojo and 130 teachers took a course in programming (3 half days).
• 2016 – 6,400 kids explored coding/STEM with Kojo and 340 teachers took a course in programming (3 half days).
• 2017: There is an even bigger interest this year.
• 2023 – 3,000 kids and 130 teachers explored coding/STEM with Kojo.

Here are some observations from Bjorn:

• Kojo is the best tool, with a low barrier of entry, I have seen for making real text based programming available for children, that is also usable all the way up to university level.
• With Scala being a real, industrial-grade programming language, the sky is the limit; and kids can tell if your teaching language is a toy language or if it is the real thing.

For more information, you can check out the Kojo page at Lund University.