Alice 2.0 — Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics

This month's topic for the Pre-Engineering Times is Computer Engineering. The first step for students to move into gaming technology and software engineering in general is to learn to program. In the past, learning to program meant beginning with a text based programming language where students had to learn a myriad of basic text commands before they could see an output. This month's activity is actually a software tool that enables students to quickly begin building their own video games.

Alice 2.0 is an object-oriented and user friendly programming language. This programming language addresses both the mechanical and sociological barriers that currently prevent many students from successfully learning to program a computer. Alice addresses the mechanical barriers to programming by making it much easier for students to create programs. Rather than having to correctly type commands according to obscure rules of syntax, students drag-and-drop words in a direct manipulation interface. This user interface ensures that programs are always well-formed. In addition, Alice reifies object-based programming by providing animated, on-screen 3D virtual objects.

The focus of the Alice project is now to provide the best possible first exposure to programming for students ranging from middle schoolers to college students. Alice v2.0 is the next major version of the Alice 3D Authoring system, from the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. It has been completely rewritten from scratch over the past few years.

The Engineering Pathway Portal to the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) brings together quality engineering education materials for from all over the internet allowing teachers to search all of these documents in a single location. Each month during the year in the Pre-Engineering Times, the Engineering Pathway highlights one or more engineering activities available on the collection related to the month's theme.