Dennis Cosgrove Caitlin Kelleher Randy Pausch Madeleine Pitsch Don Slater Gabe Yu Carnegie Mellon Un

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Dennis CosgroveCaitlin Kelleher Randy Pausch
Madeleine PitschDon SlaterGabe
YuCarnegie Mellon University Wanda Dann
Ithaca CollegeSteve Cooper- St. Josephs
University
The Alice Tea Party
For more information
This talk was presented at ACM SIGCSE 2007, March
9, 2007 in Cincinnati
www.alice.org
www.aliceprogramming.net
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Thanks to Prentice Hall

• For paying for this party!

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Our Tea Party Agenda

• The Current Alice v2.0
• Why the world needs something like Alice
• Brief Demonstration
• Examples of how to teach with Alice
• Sneak Peak at Alice v3.0
• Caitlin Kellehers work on Storytelling
• Our first public demonstration!
• real Java
• Professional-quality 3D characters and animations

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The Shrinking CS Pool
Median Per Dept.
Total

• http//www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march06/vegso.html
  

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Bureau of Labor Hecker, D. Occupational
employment projections to 2014. Monthly Labor
Review. November 2005.
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Something drastic needs to be done.Alice is our
focus, but were happy to hear about other ideas.
But do SOMETHING!
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The Alice System (www.alice.org)

• Allows students to learn computer programming
  more easily
• Drag-and-Drop editor for creating programs
• Programs are 3D movies or games
• Alice has been formally shown to improve learning
  and retention
• Alice is highly motivating for students
• Provided free (open source) by Carnegie Mellon
• Runs on

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Demo of Alice v2.0

• How many people here have taught w/Alice?

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Demo of Alice v2.0

• How many have seen an Alice demo?

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Live Demo of Alice v2.0
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Alice has always been free.Alice will always
continue to be free.
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Pedagogically Why Alice Works

• No syntax-based frustration
• Data is visible changes are animated you can
  see what is happening
• Highly motivating

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Objects are suddenly obvious

• Makes objects something students can see and
  relate to

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Support Help Online Forums at www.alice.org
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Support Help In-system Tutorials
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Instructional Materials

• www.aliceprogramming.net
• syllabi/calendars
• lectures
• labs
• assignments
• sample worlds (programs)
• sample exams
• sample projects

Steve Cooper
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www.aliceprogramming.net

• Web pages
• a live demo was done here of the resources
  available at
• www.aliceprogramming.net

Steve Cooper
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Sample Lesson Rolling a ball

• We want a realistic motion rather than a slide.
• The ball must simultaneously move and roll.

Design
realisticRoll Do together move ball forward 1
meter, as seen by the ground turn ball forward
? revolutions
Wanda Dann
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Number of revolutions

• The number of revolutions depends on the size of
  the ball.

Wanda Dann
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A function

• The number of revolutions can be computed using
• distance/(P diameter)
• Two values are needed
• the balls diameter
• the ball object has a built-in width function
• the distance the ball is to travel
• can be sent to the function using a parameter

Wanda Dann
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Coding the function
Two values are needed.
Wanda Dann
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How Alice is being used

• In pre-CS1 or programming logic
• course for majors and students considering a
  computing major
• As conceptual introduction in CS1
• Introduction to programming course
• non-majors
• attract students to become majors
• Computer literacy
• problem-solving, algorithmic thinking component
• Pre-AP in high schools

Wanda Dann
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Summer 2007 Workshops

• Alice
• May 30-31 NCC, Garden City, NY
• July 16-22 Carnegie Mellon University,
• Pittsburgh, PA
• August 8-10 CSU-Domingues Hills, Carson, CA
• Alice and Media Computation
• July 26-28 Roger Williams University,
• Bristol, RI
• August 1-3 Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
• To enroll, visit www.aliceprogramming.net

Don Slater
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Textbook
Developed over 5 year period in conjunction with
the software.
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Textbook
Developed over 5 year period in conjunction with
the software. Goal 5,000 copies in first
year Printed To Date 23,0000 copies
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Brief Edition

• In response to market requests
• 160 vs. 375 pages
• Intended to be used for
• 2-3 weeks in literacy courses
• 2 weeks of CS1, followed by a java text

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Other texts based on Alice are appearing
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To those who object
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To those who object
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To those who object

• Your department heads?

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• ObjectionAlice is just some fringe thing. It
  will go away soon.

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A lot of colleges are using Alice

• How many is a lot?
• Lower bound 243 are teaching with PH texts
• There are roughly 3,000 U.S. colleges
• 8 of US colleges are teaching with Alice/PH
  books
• Many others are teaching with other or no texts
• Many High Schools are using for pre-AP or AP

• http//www.utexas.edu/world/univ/ says 3,176

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Last 12 months, at www.alice.org

• 3.5 million page views
• 528,000 unique visitors
• 158,000 IP addresses performed 440,540 downloads
  of the system.
• (this excludes CD/textbook distribution)

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• ObjectionAlice makes for a slick demo, but
  doesnt really teach anything.

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Alice helps at-risk CS majors
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Alice helps at-risk CS majors
M. Moskal, D. Lurie, and S. Cooper, Evaluating
the Effectiveness of a New Instructional
Approach. In Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE
Conference, (Norfolk, VA).
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• ObjectionAlice is just a toy. Its not real
  programming.

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Other Things Ive Heard Called Toys

• Calculators
• Karel
• Logo
• The Macintosh (real men dont use mice)
• Pascal
• The WWW

Toy vs. Real Programming, which is
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Alice is real coding

• Alice Code Java
  Code

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• ObjectionOkay, Alice is better. But Im too
  lazy to change how I teach.

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• Cant help you with that one.

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Frame the debate what are we going to be doing
in our department?
Median Per Dept.
Total

• http//www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march06/vegso.html
  

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Were never doneAlice is a research project

• Recent Ph.D. dissertation found some big insights
  on student motivation, which are driving design
  of Alice v3.0.
• Work done with middle school girls (solve the
  harder problem), but many lessons broadly
  applicable.
• Caitlin Kelleher

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Storytelling Alice
Caitlin Kelleher
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No matter how easy something is, people still
need a reason to want to do it.
Caitlin Kelleher
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Approach
Present programming as a means to the end of
storytelling.
Caitlin Kelleher
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Changes to Alice

• Enable students to create the stories they
  envision
• high-level animations
• multiple scenes
• Provide characters and custom animations that
  help spark story
• Caricatured characters
• Animations that require explanation.

Hero or Villain
Authority Figure
Caitlin Kelleher
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Live Demo of Storytelling Alice
Caitlin Kelleher
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People are more important than objects
students very rarely animate things.
In Storytelling Alice, humanoids and other
non-bipedal characters are a different type and
have different methods than non-living things.
Caitlin Kelleher
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What people can do

• Storytelling Alice
• Say, think
• Walk to, Walk offscreen
• Walk
• Sit On
• Lie on
• Kneel
• Fall Down
• Stand Up
• Straighten
• Look at
• Look
• Turn to face, Turn away from
• Turn
• Touch
• Keep Touching

• Generic Alice
• Move
• Turn
• Roll
• Resize
• Play Sound
• Move to
• Move toward, Move away from
• Orient to
• Turn to Face, point at
• Set point of view to
• Set Pose
• Stand up
• Move at speed, turn at speed, roll at speed
• Constrain to face, Constrain to point at

Caitlin Kelleher
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Character actions often motivate use of
programming constructs like loops, methods and
parameters
Caitlin Kelleher
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touch and keep touching enable creation of
generalizable motions
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Evaluation with Girls Scouts
But we believe the approach works for both
genders and all ages. Formative 250
users Summative 88 users
Caitlin Kelleher
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Three Activities in Alice
2 Editing Programs
1 Scene Layout
3 Running Programs
Caitlin Kelleher
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Users of Storytelling Alice spend 42 more time
programming
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Storytelling Alice motivates the reluctant
programmers
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Users of the storytelling version show more
evidence of engagement/motivation
p Caitlin Kelleher
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The Future Alice v3.0

• Been in development for almost a year will
  release in 2008.
• Goal Alice as the system to teach introductory
  programming.
• Driven by Caitlin Kellehers findings about
  storytelling
• Students are motivated to make movies (or
  videogames)
• Real Java
• Alice v3.0 is a Java IDE, based on eclipse
• Your students will see real Java (if you choose)
• Drag Drop or type - its up to you!
• Insanely high production values as good as real
  video games
• We are developing a textbook along with the
  system
• Just as we did with Alice v2.0
• Wanda Dann, Steve Cooper, Randy Pausch and Don
  Slater

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Production values as good as real video
games??? This is what I couldnt tell you
about at last years Tea Party
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Best Selling PC Games of all time

• The Sims (16 million)
• Myst (9 million)
• Starcraft (9 million)
• Half-Life (8 million)
• Age of Empires II (7 million)
• World of Warcraft (5 million)
• The Sims 2 (4.5 million)
• Diablo II (4 million)
• Doom (3 million)
• Half-Life 2 (3 million)
• StarCraft Brood War (3 million)
• Warcraft II (3 million)
• Warcraft III (3 million)
• Age of Empires (3 million)
• Diablo (2.5 million)
• Civilization III (2.5 million)
• Quake (1.8 million)
• Battlefield 1942 (1.5 million)
• Civilization IV (1.2 million)

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Electronic Arts (EA)

• Worlds largest video game company
• EA has given us 300,000 and permission to use
  the characters and animations from The SimsTM 2
  in Alice v3.0
• We graciously thank them.
• EA is doing this because they care about getting
  more students, especially girls/women, interested
  in computing.

From the EA foundation
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Best Selling PC Games of all time

• The Sims (16 million)
• Myst (9 million)
• Starcraft (9 million)
• Half-Life (8 million)
• Age of Empires II (7 million)
• World of Warcraft (5 million)
• The Sims 2 (4.5 million)
• Diablo II (4 million)
• Doom (3 million)
• Half-Life 2 (3 million)
• StarCraft Brood War (3 million)
• Warcraft II (3 million)
• Warcraft III (3 million)
• Age of Empires (3 million)
• Diablo (2.5 million)
• Civilization III (2.5 million)
• Quake (1.8 million)
• Battlefield 1942 (1.5 million)
• Civilization IV (1.2 million)

And the Sims has more female than male players!
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Production Values Matter
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Production Values Matter
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The First Public Demo ofAlice v3.0 with the
SimsTM!
This scene was rendered in Alice v3.0
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Setting expectations

• Our first demo this is an early proof of
  concept.
• Alice v3.0 is still in early phase development,
  and will not be publicly available until 2008
• Our goals for this demo
• Prove that this is not vaporware
• Show you Alice v3.0 is really Java code
• Prove that we are using the SimsTM assets

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• Live demo of Alice v3.0 with the Sims

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Many (fun!) challenges

• The objected-oriented model and semantics
• classes, inheritance, overriding, polymorphism,
  etc.
• semantically, Alice v3.0 is Java
• how we express via UI and textbook is a wonderful
  challenge
• 3D objects (people) as objects is still the huge
  win of Alice
• Transition from Drag-and-Drop to Typing
• Training wheels that slowly fade away
• Visibility of Data
• variable is a term for invisible data
• Developing Custom Curricula
• from the user/teaching community
• we expect more of this, since its Java at the
  bottom
• DoTogether
• Still there, but a little ugly when you see the
  Java code

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Thanks to our Sponsors
Alice is a well supported project, and isnt
going away
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Dennis CosgroveCaitlin KelleherRandy Pausch
Madeleine PitschDon SlaterGabe
YuCarnegie Mellon University Wanda Dann
Ithaca CollegeSteve Cooper- St. Josephs
University
Questions?
www.alice.org
www.aliceprogramming.net