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Technology Tools

Expand your teaching toolkit with technology tools. Find reviews of tech tools, gadgets and software that can be used in your classroom to complement and augment your curriculum.

Who is Alice©?

Alice is not the waitress at the local diner, as you might expect, but, rather, a unique programming tool that makes it easy to animate 3-D objects to help tell a story or interact in a video or game. Carnegie-Mellon University’s free teaching tool can provide high-school and college students with exposure to the fundamentals of programming concepts. Students use a drag and drop interface to create the program which animates characters, animals or objects in their virtual world. These animations help grab the viewers’ attention while instructions are being given or a story is shared.

Storytelling Alice, a spin-off from the original Alice program, is designed to be more accessible for younger students. "While the students using Alice need to drag and drop the code to make a character walk (lift left leg, move left leg forward, lower left leg, etc.), the Storytelling user can find characters with built in commands to perform the walking function," explains Dottie Henley, Rossville High School English teacher. Students are able to tell their story quickly and easily on the computer while using problem-solving skills. The task of adding animation to their stories is intriguing and engaging for her students. They recently used Alice to illustrate a myth from the Odyssey unit they were studying in their freshman English class. "Their projects are so much better than the old poster board presentation of the past," shares Henley.

Carnegie Mellon offers a free download of this program for all computer platforms, along with access to support forums, blogs, tutorials and newsletters. With over 1500 schools listed as using Alice, teachers can connect to other users all over the world. This creative tool offers students the ability to get excited about sharing their story and collaborating with others to solve problems as they develop the stories. As Henley’s students found, using Alice can be "hard, but fun."

Visit this web site for more information about Alice.

Disclaimer: The Corporation for Educational Technology (Buddy) has no agenda other than the interests of K-12 educators. Technology product reviews render no financial incentive to our organization.

This article appeared in the ETC...and More! volume 2, number 9 newsletter and is published by the Buddy Project (Corporation for Educational Technology), in collaboration with the Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators (HECC), Indiana Computer Educators (ICE), the Indiana Department of Education, and Promoting Achievement through Technology and INstruction for all Students (PATINS).