Enhancing K-12 education with alice programming adventures

This paper describes the integration of the Alice 3D virtual worlds environment into many disciplines in elementary school, middle school and high school. We have developed a wide range of Alice instructional materials including tutorials for both computer science concepts and animation concepts. To encourage the building of more complicated worlds, we have developed template Alice classes and worlds. With our materials, teachers and students are exposed to computing concepts while using Alice to create projects, stories, games and quizzes. These materials were successfully used in the summers 2008 and 2009 in training and working with over 130 teachers. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [Computing Milieux]: Computers and EducationComputer and Information Science Education General Terms Human Factors Keywords Alice, virtual worlds, K-12 education, middle school, introductory computer science

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ITICSE
• Authors: Susan H. Rodger, Maggie Bashford, Lana Dyck, Jenna Hayes, Liz Liang, Deborah Nelson, Henry Qin
• Keywords: Alice Instructional Materials, ITICSE 2010, Middle School, Virtual Worlds