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Information About

Alice (software)




  Caption Basic animation of an ice skater
  Author Carnegie Mellon University
  Released 1999
  Latest Release Version 20
  Latest Release Date April 5 , 2005
  Language Java
  Genre Educational
  License Original BSD
  Website http://wwwaliceorg


Alice is a free Educational Programming Language with an associated Development Environment . It is developed over Squeak (a dialect of Smalltalk ). Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create Computer Animation s using 3D Models . The software is developed by Carnegie Mellon to address three core problems in educational programming:http://www.alice.org/whatIsAlice.htm
# Most programming languages are designed to be usable for "production code" thus introduce additional complexity. Alice is designed solely to teach programming.
# Alice is conjoined with its IDE. There is no syntax to remember. However, it supports the full Object-oriented , Event Driven model of programming.
# Alice is designed to appeal to specific subpopulations not normally exposed to computer programming, such as middle school girls, by encouraging storytelling through a simple drag-and-drop interface.

In controlled studies at Ithaca College and Saint Joseph's University looking at students with no prior programming experience taking their first computer science course, the average grade went from a C to a B and the retention increased from 47% to 88%. M. Moskal, D. Lurie, and S. Cooper, Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Instructional Approach. In Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference, (Norfolk, VA).

Alice 3.0 is being underwritten by Electronic Arts and will utilize character models from the The Sims 2 .http://www.alice.org/simsannounce.html

The current release of Alice, version 2.0, runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms.


SEE ALSO



REFERENCES




  • Learning to Program with Alice, Wanda P. Dann, Stephen Cooper, Randy Pausch: ISBN 0-13-187289-3

  • An Introduction to Programming Using Alice, Charles W. Herbert ISBN 1-4188-3625-7

  • Alice 2.0: Introductory Concepts and Techniques; Gary B. Shelly, Thomas J. Cashman, Charles W. Herbert ISBN 1-4188-5934-6




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