Carnegie Mellon and Electronic Arts Team Up

[Klade]

In an effort to boost understanding of computer programming at an early age Carnegie Mellon and Electronic Arts are teaming up to improve the Alice (http://www.alice.org) programming environment.

Alice is apparently a WYSIWYG editor for basic 3d computer programming. It is designed to keep students interested at the grade school level, and is especially helpful in inspiring middle school girls. Alice was created by Carnegie Mellon but will now see the input of Electronic Arts to help jazz it up.

Full Press Release can be found here (http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060306_ea.html).

[Zacharai]

With input from EA, Carnegie Mellon's popular Alice programming software (www.alice.org), currently used at 100 high schools and universities in the U.S., will reach new levels of visual excitement and usability, especially among young women and minorities.

And this is my alma mater. Good thing young women and minorities can't read either, or CMU might be in trouble.

[Liquidize105]

Can you say cheap labor force for EA?

[Klade]

I don't know. I think EA does a lot of things that rightly recieve our contempt. But I say getting little kids more interested in the technical side of computers is a good thing.

[Obsidion]

My school (Colorado School of Mines) forced us to use this environment for the first few assignments for Java 101. It's so very annoying to work with if you can already code, but you can make some very impressive beginner programs, cartoons really, with it.

Over the summer, the school invites elementary students to our computer labs, and I remember seeing these kids (both guys and girls) create some well designed cartoons. Hopefully, it sparked the software bug inside a few of these kids. I think Alice is a great tool for getting kids (specifically girls) interested in programming, but I don't see anyway how EA could help to improve it...


Edit: Also, woo first post!

[Liquidize105]

True enough.

[AversionFX]

My school (Colorado School of Mines) forced us to use this environment for the first few assignments for Java 101. It's so very annoying to work with if you can already code, but you can make some very impressive beginner programs, cartoons really, with it.


Yeah, I've never really been a big fan of any type of WYSIWYG editor. It's easier to just learn how to do stuff and then go from there, rather than having training wheels teach you how to do stuff.

Also, welcome to the machine.

[jeffbax]

As a CMU student, Its great to see stuff like this for kids, but I still hate EA :)

[Jukey]

I teach stuff like this to kids everyday. Thanks for the link, I haven't tried (or even heard of) ALICE before.

[ezra]

Edit: Also, woo first post!


Nyet.








/damn ten character limit.

[mister_slim]

Nyet.








/damn ten character limit.
His first post.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Hmm, how about a sequel to Alice instead?