Through the Looking Glass - Alice 2.0

Welcome from Alice

Presented by Thomas McLaughlin WEBSITE NING ThomasMcLaughlin

What is Alice? What is Alice? Alice is a modern programming environment designed to be a student's first exposure to object- oriented programming. It allows students to learn basic computer science while creating animated movies, simple video games, where students control the behavior of 3D objects and characters in a virtual world.

Use at Middle School Level Story Telling Alice High-level animations that enable users to program social interactions between characters. A story-based tutorial that introduces users to programming through building a story. A gallery of 3D characters and scenery with custom animations designed to spark story ideas.

Use as a Beginning programming course Alice can be used to cover every curriculum piece in my Current BASIC course. Variables, Conditionals, Loops, Arrays, Methods, Functions, Sorting and Searching. Students are more engaged and excited to use Alice Provides the foundation for Object Oriented programming without the heaving lifting of JAVA.

AliceAlice in action in my BASIC course Alice

Use for AP Computer Science Use Alice to explain object relationships. Array Lists Visualized.

Supporting Research Supporting Research Caitlin Kelleher Storytelling Alice, a programming environment that gives middle school girls a positive first experience with computer programming Barb Moskal, Deborah Lurie, Stephen Cooper Overall, the data presented in this paper supports the effectiveness of the Alice course for improving students' performance in CS1, retention within computer science, and attitudes toward computer science

Supporting Research Supporting Research Stephen Cooper, Wanda Dann, Randy Pausch The authors strongly believe that, as long as object- oriented languages are the popular language of choice in CS1, the objects-first approach is the best way to help students master the complexities of object-oriented programming. Kelleher, C In searching for ways to make computer science more appealing to students, educators must think about more than simply the numbers of students they enroll. When creating curricula based on games, they need to be sure that the games they choose really are able to motivate students of both genders.

Exporting with Alice Step one – Create an Alice project Step Two – File, Export, and choose the settings you wish Step Three – Upload folder to Web Server (optional) Open html file that was created Note: to run Alice you need to have Java and a few extra Java Components instructions to download them are here: e=applet_instructions/applet _instructions e=applet_instructions/applet _instructions

Competitions The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Carnegie Mellon University have announced a national competition in which students will share their knowledge about avoiding dangers associated with Internet use by creating computer animations. LINK: /October/oct12_competitionpromote sinternetsafety.shtml 10/October/oct12_competitionpromote sinternetsafety.shtml

ACT 48 Session Number AL113255