Alice
A.L.I.C.E. (http://www.alice.org/) is a 3D programming environment for the creation of an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. It is described as a free teaching tool that allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In A.L.I.C.E. 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects. A.L.I.C.E. is free open source software: the A.L.I.C.E. project is based at Carnegie Mellon University.
In this excerpt pupils describe how they use the program to create their own games and virtual worlds as part of their ICT programme of study. This, and the use of Open Sim, reinforce learning through Learner involvement, Creativity and Personalisation.
Creating a Virtual World (2)
The video file is embedded in the player above. You will be prompted to download a plug in if your browser is unable to display the player.
The file will start downloading when you click on the Play button, but might take a little while before there is enough downloaded for it to play. You can click on the image to view in full screen, and click again to return to this web page.
Dai Barnes is Head of Academic and In-Curriculum ICT at St Benedict’s School, Ealing. He qualified as a teacher in 1995 and spent eighteen months as a supply teacher in a broad range of London schools. Hestarted work as a full-time ICT teacher at a secondary school where he was quickly promoted to Head of Department. Since then he has worked in schools with various ICT responsibilities, but using technology in his classroom only became brilliant after attending a MirandaMod where he started to develop his Personal Learning Network on Twitter and began participating in the EdTechRoundUp weekly podcasts. More information cxan be found on his google profile:
http://www.google.com/profiles/daibarnes
You can follow Dai, the teacher who ran these lessons, on Twitter: @daibarnes, or his blog.
The Video Team
Theo Kuechel and Leon Cych produced these video interviews.
Theo Kuechel is involved in Technologies for Learning, Archives – Collections, Open Educational Resources, Music and other social activities. You can follow Theo on Twitter: @theokk, or on his blog.
Leon Cych is a web designer, coder, teacher, poet, artist, broadcaster, journalist and educationalist. He set up the nationwide poetry magazine – Poetry London Newsletter in the seventies. You can follow Leon on Twitter: @eyebeams, or his blog Learn4Life.
