A Preview of Alice 3.0, Introductory Programming in 3D

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Google Tech Talks
December, 12 2007

ABSTRACT

The mission of the Alice project is to increase and sustain the pipeline of computer science graduates, essential to the growth of technology in a global economy.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment for building animations in the form of stories, games, and web-ready videos. Alice teaches programming. Alice version 2.0 is in common use. Alice 3.0 is in active development with a projected launch date of August 2009.

Alice 2.0 has been very successful and enjoyed an adoption rate of 10% in US colleges and is expanding rapidly into high schools. We expect Alice 3.0 to surpass this mark considerably.

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, 3D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate these objects.

Alice 3.0 will also enable teachers and students to work directly with underlying Java code in a Java IDE. The ability to work with code in either drag-and-drop or in Java IDE mode will support an expansion of Alice 2.0's target populations (previously, high school and pre-CS1) to include CS1 and AP-CS courses. Alice 3.0 is scheduled for alpha and beta testing in a limited number of classrooms during the '08-'09 academic year.



Speaker: Wanda Dann, Alice Director (Carnegie Mellon University)
Dr. Wanda Dann, an active member of the Alice team for the last decade, has recently assumed leadership of the team. She is currently transitioning into a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University from Associate Professor of Computer Science at Ithaca College. Wanda's research interests include visualization in programming and programming languages and innovative approaches to introductory programming.
With Dr. Steve Cooper and Dr. Randy Pausch, she has published papers on the use of program visualization in teaching and learning introductory programming. Papers have appeared in ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) inroads, the Computer Science Education Journal, and other related publications. She is co-author of Learning to Program with Alice (2006, Prentice-Hall).
Dr. Dann's leadership as a computer science educator has been recognized in her various roles as SIGCSE Technical Symposium publications editor, special projects chair, program chair, and symposium chair. She is now a member of the SIGCSE Board.

Speaker: Dennis Cosgrove, Research Scientist (Carnegie Mellon University)
Dennis Cosgrove has worked on the Alice system since its beginnings back in the early 1990s when it was a rapid prototyping tool for constructing head mounted display based virtual environments. He played a key roll in designing and implementing versions of Alice which have striven to lower the barriers of entry to 3D graphics and, more recently, to support a gentler introduction to programming.
As the sole designer and implementer, Dennis has enjoyed unchecked, czar-like control over all aspects of the Alice system since the inception of Alice 3 in February, 2006.
Dennis has co-authored academic papers presented at the ACM I3D, UIST, and SIGCHI conferences.
Dennis was selected as the first Computer Science Department "Undergraduate Education Award" winner at the University of Virginia in 1992. He was also selected as a Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science "Outstanding Member of the Community Award," as well as an University wide "Andy Award" in 2001.

Speaker: Caitlin Kelleher, Assistant Professor (Washington University in St. Louis)
Caitlin Kelleher is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University working with Professor Randy Pausch and spent her undergraduate years at Virginia Tech.
Caitlin joined the Alice project in 1999 when she began as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. As part of her dissertation work...

Channel: People & Blogs
Uploaded: December 13, 2007 at 4:07 am
Author: googletechtalks

Length: 00:58:16
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Video Comments:
jjmontesl (November 10, 2008 at 8:50 pm)
I feel really bad about this idea and talk, for many reasons.
Zaarihs (December 9, 2008 at 9:49 pm)
Umbrella anyone?
crispitina82 (November 10, 2008 at 1:53 pm)
vaya 2 años de modulo y 3 de carrera técnica..para ver que los niños van a poder programar igual que jugar a la consola..flipante..
lovedlifexoxoxo (November 3, 2008 at 4:49 am)
read Don't laugh at this! Just do it Start thinking something you really really want cause this is astounding the person that sent this to me said their wish came true 10 mins after they read the mail so I thought what the heck You have just been visited by DrSuess's Cat in the Hat. He will grant you one wish Make your wish when the count down is over 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 MAKE A WISH Send this to 10 videos within the hour you read this. If you do, your wish will come true
verty46 (November 2, 2008 at 2:26 pm)
is it possible to extract the source code from the app and incorporate it in other projects using c++.
buildgreennow1112 (October 31, 2008 at 11:24 pm)
Yes.
juliodelgado (October 23, 2008 at 5:35 pm)
I can't believe that this woman finds acceptable that students think that programming a Hello world is not cool. I think the problem is they do not appreciate what's going on under the hood, they need to know more about digital design, computer achitecture, assembler. I't incredible that pointers and c++ is becoming something not desired in universities, what kind of engineer will we have, or maybe we want that electronic and telecommunicationenginneers take our jobs!!!! Amazin, lazy studens.
rariwan91 (October 27, 2008 at 10:29 pm)
It's not that we find it...stupid. It's just that when we get into the class we expect to be creating games on day one (Whether we know how to do it or not). After spending time in the class, I realized that it wasn't that easy. Those who are really interested will stay in the class (or at least try to learn on their own how to program).
john30340 (October 15, 2008 at 11:37 pm)
I'd like to hear how you think alice compares with RobotBASIC... see the video
RobotBASIC: The POWER of simplicity
joseinTokyo (October 15, 2008 at 3:56 am)
I am going to use it in Spain