Have you seen Alice today?

I'm a bit off on my making connections theme, but just bare with me for a minute. I have been working with gifted students over the last year and there is one student who is interested in animation and all that goes with it. Now, I am the first to admit that my understanding of animation software is minimal, but what I do know is that my district has none! We have worked with some free software to kind of get the process started. We tried Pivot Stickfigure Animator and that was fun for about an hour.

Over time we worked on a few other areas and then along came Alice. Who is Alice? Well, it is more like 'what is Alice?' According to the Alice website it is...an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience..

Well this would seem like a Eureka moment. A gift from Carnegie Mellon University Alice seems like the answer we were looking for. No it is not the top end of animation software. For students looking to get their 'feet wet' as it were; this may just be it.

I have talked to teachers who work with students with learning disabilities and they think the program would offer something different into the curriculum. I even spoke to a teacher yesterday who was so keen on the program she immediately asked for it to meet the needs of a highly gifted student who was struggling in all aspects of school life. This was exactly what he needed I was told.

Is there an educational use for Alice? YOU BET!