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

[Roland Gesthuizen]

Thanks for the links Margaret and Paul :-)

Amongst a suite of other programming languages, we are now using it at
Westall SC and installed it on all the college computers. Alice comes with a
good built-in tutorial that gets students started. With the Alice GUI tools
and some simple Python scripting, they can easily move images around a
screen to create a 3D story. Not sure what bugs you have running it over the
network Diana (bandwidth?).  I have not seen it crash, perhaps because we
installed it locally.

Another cool Python tool we loaded onto the image is Ren'Py that supports
the creation of visual novels.  Odly enough, some of the boys related to
this from their use of Adventure Quest, an online game.
   It is available with some sample games and an interactive tutorial from
http://RenPy.org

These seem to be very engaging tools for my middle school students. I have
not done an extensive literature review but from what I have read so far,
presenting programming in a storytelling context is a great way to engage
and motivate girls. Lindy McKeown mentioned something along this line at the
2008 VITTA conference keynote address.

Regards Roland

On 07/03/2008, Dr Paul Chandler <paul.chandler at yvg.vic.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> Alice is part of our year 9 "core" course, and Yarra Valley Grammar.  I
> rather like it :-)
>
> Anyone else using it?
>
>
> -----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, March 06, 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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-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead
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