Alice Workshops Led by Susan Rodger
Prof. Susan Rodger and Alice workshop participants
Watch Prof. Rodger and teachers talk about Alice
Alice is Back
With great anticipation, Adventures in Alice Programming has returned to Duke! After last year's successful workshop led by Professor Susan Rodger, middle and high school teachers again filled the LSRC this summer to learn how to teach Alice, an educational software that encourages students to program by building virtual worlds populated by animated 3D objects.
Funded by the National Science Foundation and IBM, the summer began with a follow-up workshop for previously participating teachers. “Last summer they developed lesson plans to use during the school year, and now they’ve come back to talk about what they’ve been doing,” says Rodger. At the same time, Wanda Dann of Carnegie Mellon University and Steve Cooper of Saint Joseph's University, Rodger’s co-recipients of an NSF grant for Alice, ran workshops on Alice 3.0, the new version of the program.
Following the initial workshops, a day-long Alice Symposium on June 17 welcomed educators from around the country to present papers on Alice. Duke’s own Rachael Brady, director of the Visualization Technology Group, gave the keynote address.
The summer will conclude with three one-week workshops to introduce new teachers to the software. “I had over 400 teachers apply for the 120 spots,” says Rodger. “There is a lot of interest in Alice.”