An intro to programming by Alice

Let’s be honest… learning the basic concepts of computer programming is really hard for most people. Sure, once you’ve put in the hard yards you can create lots of fun and interesting applications, but when you’re learning the basics, such as looping, conditional statements, objects and methods, it can be pretty darn boring (and abstract and demotivating and confusing and … etc.)

Last week, thanks to Jude Cooke and Leigh Blackall, I had a chance to introduce computer programming to a bunch of Year 10 students from Katoomba high. Instead of my normal “robot” introduction (you know, I’m the robot, you’ve gotta give me instructions to pick up stuff), I used a great Open Source (edit: Alice is not actually Open Source, but has a free license agreement) application called Alice, and they actually enjoyed learning the basics of computer programming!

The great thing about Alice is that you can learn to do some kick-ass stuff with just a few basics of computer programming. Learners create a 3D scene and start adding interactivity to their world by drag-n-dropping commands, events, methods and control structures – discovering what these things do rather than being told. This got them engaged and they worked through all 4 tutorials, extending them with their own ideas! The students were asking if they could take a copy home to work on their programs (or ‘worlds’ in Alice), and thanks to the Open Source licensing, I was able to tell them to go for it!

It never ceases to amaze me how an interesting activity can teach itself! I wish I had more resources like this for things like Project Management (perhaps a SimCity type game?) or Ethics and Copyright… anyone got any ideas?