Alice Programming: Week 2

I have completed two weeks (60 hours) of Alice training, yet I still have mixed feelings about the use of the program in education.  There seems to be a lot of glitches with Alice 2.2.  I don’t like how the program automatically saves several backup files on your computer with each world you create.  Currently, there does not seem to be a way to embed the worlds you create into web pages.  If you save the world as a movie file, you will lose your sound files and the world will no longer be interactive.       

Alice 2.2 is the program we were using.  Alice 3 may offer a different experience, but it is still in Beta testing.  I found that Alice 2.2 can be frustrating even for the computer experts.  

This week we were required to create a virtual Alice world that could be used in our specific discipline. Since I used to teach social studies, I decided to focus on 10^th grade civics and economics.  I created a world were two former students took future students on a tour of the course.  I was lucky that I had podcasts saved from former students describing what they learned in civics class.  I also added a clip from one of Barack Obama’s speeches where he says, “…it will be a long road, but together we can get there…”.  I really liked the finished product.  I also created a lesson plan to go with the world I created.

Alice Programming: Week 1

I have completed my first full week of Alice programming training.  Most of the week consisted of completing various tutorials to learn the basics of Alice programming.  Here is the link to the tutorials, along with a list of what we accomplished each day:

http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/workshop11/twoweek.php  

Due to the variety of technical skills throughout the participant group, I found myself wasting a lot of time waiting for others to catch up.  I was a little disappointed about this aspect of the workshop. 

The best day of the workshop, by far, was the day I got to experience the Duke immersive Virtual Environment or, (DiVE).  Here is the link to the DiVE site:  http://vis.duke.edu/dive  Each of us had an opportunity to enter the “cave” and experience several virtual worlds. 

The first world placed us on a mountain.  We became a girl, whose obstacle was to cross a dilapidated, wooden bridge.  It was a long fall down from the bridge into a hell-like world.  It was very scary, yet very exciting. 

Next, we got to experience what it was like to be inside a Wii game.  A paddle just appeared in my hand, and a green ball moved toward me.  Once I hit the ball, each panel in the distance disappeared as the ball struck it.  Once all the panels were gone, the level of that game was complete. 

The last world we experienced was the most unsettling to my stomach.  The engineer came into the room, and used something like a laser pointer to draw a bunch of lines all over the room.  Then he started the world, and we were riding the lines like we were on a roller coaster.  I had to take my special glasses off to keep from being sick.

This week has inspired me to appreciate and understand the power of virtual worlds, and how effective this tool can be in engaging digital natives in the classroom.              

Alice Programming: Days 1-3

For the past three days, I’ve been learning about Alice Programming and how it can be a valuable tool for middle and high school teachers.  I am participating in a three week workshop, two weeks this summer with a follow-up week next summer, at Duke University.  Here is the link to the program: http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/

The first three days of this workshop have been packed with tutorials to get us acquainted with the drop and drag programming tools for Alice.  The first world I created using Alice was a Space World.  Here is a screenshot:

One of the coolest things I learned to do so far was to make a dragon fly, breathe fire, and roar all at the same time.

I’m looking forward to learning more about applying virtual worlds to the middle and high school curriculum.  I can see how digital natives would be able to quickly pick up the programming capabilities that Alice has to offer.