June 22, 2011
Alice Programming Adventures – Follow-up Workshop
Outline
 Welcome, Introductions, and Motivation
 History of our workshops
 Usage of Materials for Integration Alice into K-12
o Computer Science concepts
o Animation and Special Effects
o Tutorials, template worlds and classes
o Discipline Specific
 Future Work
Motivation
 Few women in computer science: 56% AP test takers female, only 15% CS takers female
 Lower number of test takers for CS in general
 Low levels of women at all levels in CS: high school, college, grad school, professors
 Many students don’t know what CS is when they enter college b/c not taught in middle and high
schools, think “keyboarding, spread sheets, word processing” – not very exciting
Alice Virtual Worlds
 Hands-on, interactive, visual, less error prone, exciting results right away
 Potential to excite kids about CS like experiments excite them about chemistry/physics/biology
The Social Network / Facebook also getting more kids interested in CS.
History of 5-12
 NSF grant, three-work workshop in 2008
 Integrate Alice by training teachers
 Six sites: Durham NC, Charleston SC, Virginia Beach VA, Denver CO, Oxford MS, San Jose CA
 Durham site focused on NC middle schools
 2008: 3-week teacher workshop
 2009/10: one week workshops
 Over 130 teachers, mostly middle school, some high school
o Only a few have programmed before
o Developing lesson plans
 2008: two 1-week middle school camps
o Taught Alice, building own Alice worlds
 Alice Symposium, June 17, 2009
o 25 papers presented, over 120 attendees, Rachel Brady from DIVE – keynote speaker
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Targeting all subject teachers: language arts, math, science, history, foreign language, music and
art, media and technology, business
New NSF ITest Scale-up Grant, 2011-2016
 Three states: NC, SC, MS – reach throughout three states
 3-week workshops spread over 2 summers
 5 years funding, 2.5 million
 Provide lodging, food, small stipends
 Another Alice Symposium in 2012/2013
Usage in middle/high schools
 Teachers: lecture examples, interactive quizzes, worlds on concepts for students to view
 Students: projects (instead of poster, a model), take or build quizzes, view and answer questions
about a world
Free Materials / Introductory Tutorials
 Simple, short 15-min tutorials to try Alice – add object, use built-in methods
o Astronaut on moon
 One hour starting tutorials – write methods, simple events, camera
o Getting Started with Alice – Mac glitch with fairy wing
 Longer starting tutorials – 4 parts
o Skater World
o Princess and Dragon – glitch with color change with speech
 Short tutorials on CS topics
o Programming – sequential and “at the same time”
o Methods – teaching characters how to walk
o Events – buttons and birds
o Looping
o Conditionals – making a choice
o Functions – how tall are you
o Lists – objects moving in unison
o Variables – timers/scores
 Other Fun/Animation Topics blended in
o Storyboards
o Changing camera views
o Scene changes and lighting
o Fading in and out
o Making billboards
o Making objects invisible and visible
o Sounds
o Gluing objects to others
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Math Example
o Danica McKellar
o Improper Fractions Story
 Speech bubble awkward placement – have character part “say” instead
o Rounding Numbers world
Quiz Worlds
o Number of animals
o Several template worlds
English as Second Language example
o Putting pictures in order to tell a story
o Practice English: go through and type in a phrase for each picture
o Teacher can modify by using 10 other pictures in an array or list
Other Quiz templates
o Template world – click on object that is answer
o Template Class – quiz with “ask user” function built in
Alice used as Projects
o Historical Tour project: Brooklyn Bridge
o Book report: Charlotte’s Web
o Pong Game – breaking games into manageable sections
o Adventure Game
o Getting the Grade: a point and click game
 Using yellow arrows to move through rooms in a house to find homework
 Multistep: find remote to turn on TV, get code to safe, get match and light
fireplace, burn painting and key falls down, unlock door and get homework
o Using Pearls to Understand Variables – inspired by Danica McKellar
 Demonstrates how to solve a linear equation
o Creating a Boat Racing Game in Alice
 Originally created by a student
 Bug: “You lose” – continue and finish game – “You win”
Examples in Science
o Created a bar chart
o More examples by Liz
This Summer’s Focus
 Running two-week beginner workshop and one-week follow-up workshop in 2012
 Focus with research students is “how to integrate computing into mathematics”
o Tutorials for mat worlds students can build
o Looking at NC state standards and CSTA recommendations
Idea from Durham Tech professor
 Angry Birds – as a model to learn trigonometry
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Using angles for shooting
Discussion initiated Kathleen Christopher
 Middle School club that teaches Alice
 Four Thursdays
 “Explore passions” not a class
 10-15 minute demo, give handout - some kids do own thing
 Game with these 5 elements: pull in kids that want to do step-by-step and the boys that want to
learn specific things covered in the tutorial
 Do whatever you want as long as it contains these elements
 Making it clearer what the prerequisites and topics covered in a game are
 Sometimes kids are unable to articulate what they want the program to do
 Greater emphasis on importance of storyboarding – getting teachers to understand
Nate Schular (accident on 147)
 Teaches AP U.S. Government, European & World History
 Political cartoon assignment: kids use billboards for faces
AFTER LUNCH
Professor Rodger demonstrating creating a world with buildings and rooms, teacher discussions about
game development
World has a threshold function that measures distance from the boundary box of an object rather than
the center of the object – Liz
Melissa’s presentation
 Matrix Multiplication
o Teacher asks about building world to add smaller integers
 Inequalities / Weighing
 Simple random sample
o Teacher asks about possibility of expanding world to model randomness in polling, like
with gender, educational level, salary
Teacher Discussion
 Class: full-year elective for 11th and 12th graders, all Alice
 Mostly do games, but looking for ideas on what else to do
 Using Alice to make projects for other classes
o Geometry teacher: has students take pictures of various shapes around building
Peggy’s presentation
 Distributive Property world
 Scientific Notation
Teacher discussion
 Fran, art teacher?
 Problems installing Alice on school computers
 One-to-one: one Mac per kid? $25 deposit with school-approved laptop cases, $50 damages
 Difficulties transferring files via email due to lack of admin privileges on computers
Liz’s presentation
 Bar Chart – generalized template so teachers don’t have to create a bar chart each time
 Atmospheric Layers – bar chart application, earth science request from teachers
 Treasure Hunt Game – gets guy onto island to find the treasure
o Teaches picking up objects and storing them in an invisible visualized array
Problem with renaming methods on a Mac
Teacher : couldn’t get objects exactly right; chicken wouldn’t fit perfectly somewhere
Liz: Alice is not conducive to perfectionist tendencies; need to just accept that things won’t be perfect
Teacher discussion: semester course that exposes students to Alice, Java, etc.
Chitra’s presentation
 Ice Cream store for linear functions
 Toy Store for percentages
General tutorial for small things like adding special characters (accents)