Thanks for all the feed back, it really helps. I guess another one of my reasons that I would like to stick to Java is currently this is the language that I am teaching myself after a couple of years break. Because of time constraits I would like to stick to one langauge at the moment however as mentioned teaching OO concepts maybe a little to much at the start for some kids. However this is something I will have to have a think about. Once again thank you for you feed back  

Well I have yet to do my first lot of teaching rounds therefore I am unsure of the age group I will be teaching. However after easter I will be placed in a school which will give me a greater understanding of how things pan out in schools rather than what is perscribed via cirricula- please note I am teaching in Australia therefore things differ from the UK and the USA. But some of the information I have been getting from my lecturers at Uni - who are teachers in secondary schools- indicate that the programmming languages of choice currently are VB, Delphi and Pascal. The reason these languages are in use is mainly because these langauges are what current teachers know themselves. I guess by introducing Java to kids in school hopefully will result in an increase in people developing in the Java langauge o yes and as I keep saying the free nature of the JDK is a major advantage, I don't know many kids who have lots of cash to buy expensive developement environments. Furthermore kids love games, and hopefully programming them, so watching kids learn about Java via writting games can help us all to think in different ways by observing the learning process. Anyway enough of my yakking  

Hmm learning Java compaired to Basic may not be as easy but the point is I believe Java teaches kids to think in more abstract ways rather than click and drag buttons etc. For starters Java is a good tool to introduce the idea of OO design if you keep the examples simple. Also if kids then want to go onto a computer major at Univeristy OO design and OO languages are usually taught rather than VB, well VB has made some inroads but it can result in poor code and rather bad objects o yes and you have to buy it from Mr Gates at considerable cost.

Thanks for the feed back  

I am currently completing my education degree. My teaching area wil be computing however the schools in my state are almost 100% MicroSoft VB - to the best of my knowledge. However I would like to use Java as a teaching tool because it is FREE and many of our state schools have little cash. Mainly I would like to team up with some like minded people to create a very very basic text based adventure game sorta like a MUD but running in a DOS box and use it as a teaching tool with a view to extend the game a latter date. If things really get going I would like to share what ever is created with other teachers- if you let your mind wander the possibilites are endless, well almost I really hope I can get this running as I believe it would be a valuable exercise for myself (a newbie) and other newstarters as well as my future students. If anyone has any suggestions or I have posted this in the wrong area please let me know.
Cheers