{"id":34,"date":"2013-11-27T20:27:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T20:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmclaughlin.com\/web\/?p=34"},"modified":"2022-11-21T21:02:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T21:02:07","slug":"through-the-looking-glass-11-27-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/27\/through-the-looking-glass-11-27-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Looking Glass 11\/27\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2008\u00a0\u201cRandy\u201d Pausch died. \u00a0You may have heard of the last lecture series,\u00a0Pausch delivered\u00a0his<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cLast Lecture\u201d, titled \u2018Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams\u2019, at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. This lecture was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical \u201cfinal talk\u201d knowing you were going to die. \u00a0For Pausch this was truly his \u201cLast Lecture\u201d \u00a0he knew he was dying and had about 6 months to live when he gave this lecture. \u00a0It is at the bottom of the post if you have not seen it. \u00a0It is so much more worth watching then any hour of television you would normally. His lecture was about achieving his childhood dreams and enabling the dreams of others.<\/p>\n

Randy Pausch enabled the dreams of others by creating the course \u201cBuilding Virtual Worlds.\u201d \u00a0In this course student development of virtual realities and it was through this course, Pausch and his students created\u2019Alice\u2019 \u00a0Alice<\/a>\u00a0is a 3D environment that enables learners to create stories, games and visualizations and oh by the way it teaches computer programming skills. \u00a0Pausch believed, \u201cthe best way to teach somebody something is to have them think that they\u2019re learning something else.\u201d \u00a0And I did I mention he wanted it to be\u00a0free<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I have been using Alice for 4 years now and it is by far one of the best things to happen to computer programming since Bill Gates bought DOS from \u00a0Seattle Computer Products. \u00a0It has opened doors for students and allowed them to understand the complex relationships that exist in the world of object oriented programming. \u00a0However, none of that is important at least to the kids. \u00a0They get a change to be expressive and create things. \u00a0That is a true source of motivation to learn for anyone.<\/p>\n

There are two versions of Alice (2.3 and 3.1) most people starting out will want the 2.3 version. \u00a0 So Why are there two versions? Alice 3 was originally designed to replace Alice 2 but the\u00a0creators<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0Carnegie Mellon\u00a0 recognize how and for what purposes people are using Alice. \u00a0Alice 2 and Alice 3 are as different at MS Word and Power Point. \u00a0They serve two different purposes. So they decided to maintain both. At this time \u00a0Alice 2 and Alice 3 are \u00a0different tools for different audiences as defined by age groups, grade levels, and course outcomes\/goals. In addition there are a wealth of curricular resources that are available for Alice 2 and the Alice 3 resources are still in progress. \u00a0Alice 2 has multiple text books as well as instructor support materials at\u00a0aliceprogramming.net<\/a>. A rich repository of K-12 instructional materials for Alice 2 have been created and stored at Duke University\u2019s Adventures with Alice site, maintained by Dr. Susan Rodger. \u00a0The creators of Alice don\u2019t see either version going away but they might both eventually be replaced by\u00a0\u00a0Looking Glass<\/a>, a tool being developed by their collaborators at Washington University, St. Louis.<\/p>\n

So step through the looking glass with Alice and participate in the\u00a0Hour of Co<\/a>de<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2008\u00a0\u201cRandy\u201d Pausch died. \u00a0You may have heard of the last lecture series,\u00a0Pausch delivered\u00a0his\u00a0\u201cLast Lecture\u201d, titled \u2018Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams\u2019, at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. This lecture was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}