Enjoyable Introduction to Programming using Alice

I will offer another free course to introduce programming for high school students (Sep 15 to Oct 13 - 5 Saturdays - 10am to 1pm). School teachers, parents, college students & other adults are welcome to attend as well. Click here and email Jey to register. Feel free to forward this email to your friends.

http://www.utdallas.edu/%7Ejeyv/alice_course.htm

“Enjoyable Introduction to Programming using  Alice ” Dr. Jey Veerasamy, CS faculty, UT Dallas

How did we learn to ride a bicycle? We had to learn 2 things together: Balancing & Pedaling to go forward. That is why we used training wheels to take care of balancing until we mastered pedaling. Learning to program has similar characteristics. When students are introduced to C/C++/Java language directly, they are expected to learn & apply the syntax and logic together. After struggling with syntax for hours, good % of students want to run away & never come back to programming!

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and a few other universities have recognized this issue and devised visual programming environments to help the freshers. Idea is to use drag-and-drop programming and avoid the syntax errors all-together. Visual environment also enables the students to test the logic quickly and enjoy the learning experience. With increased confidence & strong logic skills, students can go forward to learn more serious languages like C/C++/Java.

Alice 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 freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice , 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice 's interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming languages, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students. gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course and enables them to try serious programming languages with more confidence.

We will use Alice 2.3 software for this course. You can download the one with " Alice textbook worlds" since it has additional scenes from a textbook. Alice 2.3 is available for Windows and Mac. Download the software and follow the instructions in Alice website to set it up before coming to the class.

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Dr. Jey Veerasamy, Erik Jonsson School , UT Dallas
CS Teaching Faculty + Director of CS UTDesign Program

972-883-4241 ECSS 3.231 jeyv@utdallas.edu

Peer Tutoring program coming soon

The seniors in the STEM Academy are starting work on our new Peer Tutoring program.  More details will be coming out.  This program is open to all students in STEM, PSA, and EMAC. 

Getting Ready to Start

School starts in a couple of days.  We are all excited to start the new year and break out the new equipment we got over the summer.  A few reminders before Monday:

• Students will be going to their "Homeroom" class before going to 1st period.  Their homeroom assignments will be posted around the hallways.
• The solar car team is working Monday afternoon from 4-6.  Any students interested in joining the team need to come to D103 after school.
• I am not sure if the robotics team is meeting on Monday or not.
• All STEM students will have an alternative schedule on Tuesday.  They will be going to other rooms during Academy classes only.  They will go to ALL non-academy classes like normal

Notes for Thursday 8/16

Hello everyone.  We are getting ready for the start of school.  Had a great afternoon with the new STEM teachers today.  I want to remind everyone of a couple of upcoming events:

• The Annual Back-To-School Ice Cream Social is Tuesday 8/21 at 6:30 in the commons at CHS.  Everyone is invited to come.  While there, you will get to hear about many of the exciting things happening this year, like: 
• our new mentoring and peer-tutoring program,
• the new all-girls solar car team,
• our robotics team, and
• see some of the new activities happening in class.
• We still need some help with board positions on the booster club.  Open positions are:
• Vice President (someone had spoken to me about it last spring, but I misplaced the card)
• Assistant Webmaster
• Fundraising
• Publicity/Communications
• The First Lady of Kansas State University, who is also an Engineering Dean, is coming to CHS to talk with the students on Wednesday 8/22 at 2:30.  I don't have a location yet, but it will be at the high school.  Anyone who wants to come and talk with her is welcome to attend.

Have a great weekend!

A Challenge for students

I've got a challenge for our engineering students.  We are wanting two different builds completed for the expo this year.  The first is a Karaoke infused Ruben's Tube and the other is a "Musical" Tesla Coil. All qualified entries (regardless of how many) will get to display their work at the Engineering Expo on November 4.

As both of these can be dangerous and you have never done them, they must be done
1.  With adult supervision at all times
2.  Done like the instructions given before making any "improvements"
3.  You must have your parents permission, in writing, before beginning.


http://www.k12lab.com/inspiration/karaoke-on-fire
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Musical-Tesla-Coil-like-a-Pro/

The challenge is this:
1.  Present your parent's permission letter before beginning.
2.  All teams wishing to enter, must have completed their device by October 10.
3.  A video demonstration will be uploaded to the Engineering YouTube channel for popular voting.
4.  A panel presentation/demonstration will be given on or about October 16.
5.  The winning device (one of each kind) will be determined by a combination of the popular vote, the panel presentation, and School of Engineering faculty.
6.  The winning devices will be able to be on the news promo we usually do right before the expo.  Being on the news is dependent on the news station bringing us again and allowing us to bring the devices.  

What a fun day

Our 1st Annual STEM Family Picnic was a lot of fun.  Thanks to everyone who brought food to share.  The weather was very cooperative to make a very enjoyable afternoon even better.  What a great way to finish up Boot Camp and get ready for the start of the year.  If anyone has photos, please send us a copy for our wrap up media.

Engineering Lab Set up

We need all the help we can get at 9am on Monday 9/13 to get the labs set up and ready for the start of school. 

STEM Family Picnic Reminder

Don't forget about the STEM Family Picnic Saturday from 11 to 1 in the CHS courtyard.