For this course you are to complete a mini project during each of four different lesson cycles, one of which you will be asked to select to become embedded into your final project.
The idea of introducing the mini projects is to allow you to practice with the selected software product so you can become familiar enough with it to make a decision as to use it in your final project or not. In your reflection for each mini project, you are to post the artifact (either the artifact itself or a link to it). You are to also post a reflection describing your experiences with it and your assessment as to its applicability for a classroom environment.
For your final project, select one of the four and dig a little deeper into it by developing a functionally rich artifact that can be integrated into a lesson you create.
For each mini project we ask you to spent enough time on the product to assess its usefulness in a classroom and to be able to describe the circumstances under which it could be utilized.
Storytelling Alice (SA) was created by Caitlin Kelleher as part of her doctoral work in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to motivate a broad spectrum of middle school students (particularly girls) to learn to program computers through creating short 3D animated movies. It is loosely based on an earlier project project developed at IBM called Eliza. Alice is a later iteration of Storytelling Alice. While both of them still exist, support for the latter has been suspended, although some organic updates have taken place. It gets a bit confusing trying to decipher all the versions. For that reason we have whittled the activity down to focusing on Alice. You MAY decide on your own to go with later versions of Storytelling Alice … that is up to you. Just let me know when you submit which one you decided to go with. Links to Storytelling Alice are actually found on the Alice site noted below.
Alice and SA are quite similar; in fact, they look identical at first glance. However, there are several important differences. Alice is used primarily by high school and college students whereas SA was designed specifically for middle school students. It is particularly appealing to girls in this age group because it includes additional characters that appeal to middle school youth (e.g., a lunch lady) and a variety of pre-programmed animations and behaviors that enable users to easily program social interactions and help to generate story ideas. Alice includes some functionality that is not available in SA. Therefore, Alice worlds currently do not run in SA although they will open and play and can even be modified in Alice (this is referred to as backwards and forward compatibility). Finally, unlike ALice, which is multi-platform, earlier versions of SA is PC-based only. (It does appear that versions 2.4 and above of SA have a MAC version). It is your call which one to use, that is why I have decided to add asn extra week to this cycle.
For more information on SA, go to http://www.alice.org/kelleher/storytelling/index.html. To learn more about Alice, go to http://www.alice.org/.
Here is a link to Kaitlin’s original thesis about SA:
Tutorials (there are plenty).. Note that the lines often blur between them… don’t get confused (it is rather easy…) the idea is to challenge yourself. We are showing you Storytelling Alice simply as a reference point to the development of Alice. To repeat, while we believe that Alice is the logical choice you MAY wish to follow the links on the Alice site and try out the newer versions of Storytelling Alice.
Alice
Download Alice at: http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice
Some Tutorials
Mini Project:
For this lesson, there are two deliverables:
- Create a small mini project using Alice . This should be educational in nature (i.e., teach something through story). It can be on any subject matter you choose. Make it creative. It should be rendered so it can be played by your classmates. It is intended that the resulting artifact you create will be in the form of a video. Because the file size MAY be over the limit set by Canvas, we need you to upload your run-time video using the Easy Uploader application that I created for you (password=123456). I know we can use You Tube but I have very mixed emotions about doing this with class projects (loss of copyrights, using copyrighted works, FERPA, among them). So, please do not use You Tube but upload the projects using our private upload program. Follow instructions and be sure to make the correct selections in the drop downs. All lowercase!!!!
Justin Champagne (previous Ed tech student) created a step-y-step set of instructions on how to create the video for your project:
- Open Alice 2
- click File
- Click Open World
- Then Find your folder project is in
- click File
- Scroll down to “Export Video”
- Push “Record”
- Let project play until its done
- Push stop recording
- Click “Export Video” on right side
- Should read “Encoding Video…:
- After a few minutes just Click “Open”
- Should read “Merging sound and Audio”
- Close out of video box
- It might say “Error removing temporary folder”
- Just click “ok”
- Minimize the page
- Click on “my video” in your folder
- Rename/or Resave it using sa (lowercase) as your file name… and whatever file extension that is there… no need to add your name etc as the uploader function will take care of that.. please do not call this file anything else.. I need to know in advance what the file name will look like so I can preset the viewing page
- Post in the Drop Box set up in Canvas a reflection on this program, answering the following questions:
- Do you think this program is appropriate to use in a K-20/work environment? If so, how would you envision using it?
- On a scale of 0-5 (5=very easy/intuitive) how would you rate the user interface with this product (be sure to specify which one: Alice or Storytelling Alice). Explain your rating in a few sentences.
- Explain your personal experiences with the product … trials and tribulations, ah-ha! moments, etc).
- Noting that this is a doctoral thesis project, review it in terms of your impressions about the kinds of work required at certain universities in so far as requirements for doctoral./MFA degrees. Do you think this kind of thing is appropriate? How would it be if FGCU instituted something similar (on a smaller scale) of a portfolio type of project requirement for its Ed Tech program? this is something we continue to discuss in this course.
When done upload using Easy Uploader. In a day or so you can go here to see if it works (same password 123456); I will convert all of your files to an flv file show it shows on the viewing page. SELECT ALICE AS THE PROJECT NAME FOR THIS UPLOAD
The idea is to show that you have learned enough about this program to be able to make a judgment about its applicability in educational environments and can complete part 2: