Learning OO Concepts & Java2 for mainframe developers - prefer free

Question

I believe I have read through all of the postings which came up during a search for "object oriented" and I don't believe my question has been answered.
I am putting together a training plan recommendation for my boss (I work for a US state agency, therefore I need to watch the $$$ and would prefer solutions which are free) for teaching OO and Java to the entire applications team. About 70% of the developers are mainframe programmers with no knowledge of OO and the rest are client/server developers all with at least a VB background and varied knowledge of OO. My goal is to come up with a plan which will provide everyone with a good and sound foundation in OO (not just learning about "what is an object") and then incorporate learning Java 2 (eventually moving towards J2EE). I'm pretty convinced that between the "new to Java Programming Center" site and others, we can achieve the J2 knowledge for free. I'm not so sure about the OO knowledge. That's where I need your help!
I have perused Bruce Eckel's book and even he himself has said that he wrote this based on the reader's fundamental understanding of C, so this is probably not the route to take.
The Sun site has a free tutorial, "Learning the Java Language", which appears to just tackle a few of the concepts.
Is there anything else out there or a more elementary question - is this the right approach to take (or should we learn OO by way of learning J2)? I am ideally looking at free stuff first, but would entertain books, CBT's, etc. which are not costly (already know about "Developing Java Software" by Winder and Roberts and an Object Technology book by Taylor).
Help!!! Thanks! Janet

Answer 1

Hi Janet,
It sounds like you have your work cut out for you. I'm curious why you're looking to separate the OO concepts from the Java ones. Is your goal for everyone to learn Java in the end? Or do you just want everyone to learn about OO concepts and only some of them actually learn Java? I can understand wanting to have a strong OO foundation before moving to Java, but I think the two can often be taught simultaneously.
Another thought -- do you think it would be easier to have one person (I'm guessing you) do a crash course on OO and Java first and then teach it to everyone else? Or are you planning on having everyone go through it together? I would think if you could nail the basic concepts on your own, you could then effectively pass your knowledge onto the others.
Unfortunately I don't have any books to recommend, but I did do a quick search on Google and I found a few tutorials that focus mostly on OO concepts. When it comes time to learn Java, I'm pretty confident that the Java Tutorial on Sun's website is a good place to start. Books like Java In A Nutshell (O'Reilly) are good because they're part textbook, part reference manual, but that might be out of the question because of the money. In any case, check out some of these sites. They seem to be a step in the right direction; and if nothing else, they're free!
http://www.gnacademy.org/text/cc/Tutorial/tutorial.html
http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/cs497/lectures.html
http://www-heller.harvard.edu/~mhagger/classes/C++-OOP/
http://www.accu.org/acornsig/public/articles/oop_c.html
http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/family/jos/oop/oop1.htm (this last one seems pretty neat)
Hope that helps a little.
- Sheepy