Slashdot Mirror

Alice and StoryTelling Alice
"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 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."
Thank you Randy Pauch. We miss you.

Or try
Myro using Microsoft Robotics Studio

or Pyro which was the non-MS precursor to Myro... program bots in Python with either real bots or simulation.

Either way, the graphical environments and real bots give kids a great way to SEE and TOUCH their results, which is more how they learn. You can cover all the important software constructs (variables, loops, events, data structs, etc) and avoid some of the abstract conceptualization required in more conventional languages/applications. They will learn the concepts through doing & using them. Then once they are hooked, they can dig into other languages.

Works great for middle school & college kids.... Pyro's got years of track record teaching intro to AI - to liberal arts majors!

Most languages dont give much back quickly. You need something that will catch and hold their attention. 3D graphics and Robotics are cool to kids (and many of us geeks) and actually not that hard to break into. In fact both are used very effectively to introduce middle school and older students to programming - even high level stuff like AI (or autonomous behaviors). And the links below are Open Source!

Check out Alice.org

"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 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."

Or how about Robotics?
Myro and Institute for Robotics Education
or its pure python predecessor Pyro Robotics

Buy them a $150 scribbler robot with Bluetooth camera module that you program in Python, and turn them loose on our free online textbook.

Robot: http://www.georgiarobotics.com/roboteducation/products-1.html

Textbook: http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Learning_Computing_With_Robots

Disclaimer: I teach this class, and work for IPRE ( http://www.roboteducation.org/ )

Buy them a $150 scribbler robot with Bluetooth camera module that you program in Python, and turn them loose on our free online textbook.

Robot: http://www.georgiarobotics.com/roboteducation/products-1.html

Textbook: http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Learning_Computing_With_Robots

Disclaimer: I teach this class, and work for IPRE ( http://www.roboteducation.org/ )

Georgia institute of Technology is playing around with some robotics (made by Microsoft :( ) for their introduction to Computer Science class. These robots will probably be simple enough for your class, but more advanced than legos. while I hate (really hate) to be an add for Microsoft, here are the links to the info http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul0 6/07-12PersonalRobotsEducationPR.mspx http://www.roboteducation.org/ this program is just starting up, but you should keep an eye on it. If microsoft doesn't screw this up, then this will probibly be helpful to you. as far as cheep goes, i can't tell you how good this will be. (crazy thought) you might be able to contact m$ and they may be interested in starting something like this in the high schools. so they might have money set aside just for that. you might get lucky. I doubt it, but you might. there is no harm in trying. good luck, i hope this helps.

You can get started right now with real and simulated robots. Try PyroRobotics.org which allows you to write robot "brains" in Python code. You can control a simulated robot immediately, or build your own out of a Roomba, and use the same control system.

Also, check out blogs.RobotEducation.org for more information on other robots.

Prof Phreak,

We'd like to pick your brain. The goal of the institute is to try to make a shrink-wrapped robot so that every student will have their own, it will be more advanced than the typical Lego-based robot, and yet inexpensive. The intro course will be for majors, but not be just the same ol thing. If you have suggestions, please feel free to drop us a note over at http://www.roboteducation.org/ Thanks!

Penguin, Good points. First, it is exactly this type of student involvement that will help change CS. Before you completely throw the baby out with the bathwater, though, consider these points: 1. This CS1 isn't aimed at you (or others that are interested in CS). It is aimed at those that aren't. The idea is to attract them into the field. 2. The robot will be designed to be as sturdy as an ipod. 3. How do you that the curricular materials won't be a good intro? Maybe a better concern is: "how will we work mathy things into the course?" You just have to remember that we are trying to attract the anti-slashdot student. What is she looking for in an intro course? Help us figure that out at our blog: http://blog.roboteducation.org/

Note to self: when talking to the press, don't use complicated technical jargon, like "debugging" :)

I think what I actually said was "rather than debug a program to make it give the right answer, the students must debug the program to make the robot behave the way they want it to."

I think many of you will actually like the hardware, software, and curriculum that we are designing. Checkout http://www.roboteducation.org/ and http://pyrorobotics.org/ The new version of the software will be based on Pyro, Python Robotics. We think of the hardware as something like an ipod on wheels. The software is also being developed with an open source license. This project is not what many of you guess it might be.

The CS1 and CS2 that we are developing won't be watered down, but also won't be just the standard "intro to programming, using robots". It's a complete rethinking of the intro courses.

-Doug Blank