[Year 12 Its] algorithm animation

[Robert Timmer-Arends]

Hello all

While trawling the web for IS material in 2004 I came across the idea of
algorithm animation software. Didn't have time to investigate then and went
hunting last year. I found a program called Jeliot and have finally got
round to trying it out (talk about a long time coming!)

Basically it allows you to key in, or pull in a file, of java code and then
'runs' it, showing you the creation of variables, what happens to their
contents as the program executes etc. Its free for on-line use or for
download at

http://cs.joensuu.fi/jeliot/

While java may not be big time in IS teaching, syntactically it is almost
identical to php, C, javascript (python I think) so Jeliot should be good
for anyone teaching these languages. Also, in my brief play with it, it
appears that you can type an algorithm in directly without having to do all
the setup of classes etc, so it should be possible to translate VB syntax
into java - I suppose references to form objects, eg textboxes, could be a
problem, but for simple algorithms these could be treated as variables (?)

Regards
Robert T-A
Brighton SC