[Yr7-10it] Alice Programming (and Randy)

[Dr Paul Chandler]

That's not my experience of Alice ... Found it quite stable. 

-----Original Message-----
From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Diana (Hatch)
Faizoulline
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 8:46 AM
To: 'Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [Yr7-10it] Alice Programming (and Randy)

Only problem with Alice ... terribly buggy working over the network.
Often students are unable to complete a save or later unable to open the
file.
Very frustrating.


Diana (Hatch) Faizoulline
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Road, McKinnon 3204
Telephone: (03) 8520 9085
Email: hat at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/home/hat/ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:yr7-10it- 
> bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Margaret Lawson
> Sent: Thursday, 6 March 2008 10:08 PM
> To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
> Subject: [Yr7-10it] Alice Programming (and Randy)
> 
> Alice is "an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy 
> to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive 
> game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available 
> teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to 
> object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental 
> programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and 
> simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and 
> vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to 
> animate the objects."
> 
> It is a FREE programming package with lots of FREE resources for 
> teachers ...
> 
> Randy Pausch is the creator (or one of the creators) of "Alice"
> software
> project, and ... he is dying from Pancreatic Cancer.
> He delivered his last public Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University
> (CMU)
> in Pittsburgh ( dubbed the "Last Lecture") called "Really Achieving 
> Your Childhood Dreams". I managed to catch him on Oprah the other week

> (I know, I know) and thought It would be worthwhile to push the 
> details onto the lists.
> 
> If you teach programming, it is well worthwhile to become familiar 
> with Alice. There are some great resources out there, suggested 
> syllabus and online communities that use the environment as an 
> introduction to programming. As for Randy, hunt up his "last lecture" 
> (links from his site). It is worthwhile listening to and could even be

> good to show at school to some of the older kids.
> 
> Links:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
> http://www.alice.org/
> 
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> Margaret
> (on leave from St. Michael's Grammar School) 
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