Jul 30 2009
Digital Storytelling & Programming with Alice
Most educators are familiar with Randy Pausch’s famous “Last Lecture.” Far fewer know about his amazing computer learning tool called Alice. Pausch and his team developed Alice as a 3-D virtual world environment that introduces basic computer programming concepts. The best part is you can get Alice from a free download at Alice.org.
Many schools are using Alice as a digital storytelling platform, and the program is within the grasp of even 10-11 yr old middle-school students. Honor Randy Pausch’s memory, and download a free copy of Alice today! Work through the example tutorials, then use Alice to explain to your students how all computers work.
Every computer system, regardless of size or purpose can do these things:
- Process Input /Output
- Store information
- Do repetitive tasks
- Make decisions
- Do math computations
Alice can also do all of these things. I have put together an overview of Alice which explains each of these five things a computer system can do. You may download and reproduce the PDF for any non-commercial use as much as you like.
I will walk you through this overview at the free Edublogs Online Professional Development this evening (8pm Central Time – 9am Friday, Western Australia time). Feel free to join us if you would like to learn more. Use this link to join in the discussion.
***Edit***
A couple of resources for those of you interested in using Alice.
- Dick Baldwin’s tutorials were immensely helpful to me in getting started.
- Alice cannot record it’s video, so I use CamStudio to capture video from my screen to disk. It’s free.
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[...] all possible. However, with so many to choose from, don’t pluck a course out of the air. Digital Storytelling & Programming with Alice | TechIntersect – billgx.edublogs.org 07/31/2009 Most educators are familiar with Randy Pausch’s famous [...]