Navta Associates

This was the best excuse yet to take my boys, ages 13 and 15, out of school for the last couple of periods in the day. We had the opportunity to watch the “best of the best” virtual worlds projects generated by this year’s crop of ETC students—an entertaining, mind-bending, stimulating array of “experiences”.

Here’s the “official” info:

On Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at Purnell Center’s Chosky Theater, we at the Entertainment Technology Center will present the annual Building Virtual Worlds Show. From virtual reality to audience interaction and everything imaginable in between, this live showcase of the most impressive student work from the semester is truly a must-see event!

Over the course of this semester, BVW students are collaborating in four-person interdisciplinary teams to create a series of virtual worlds, each of which must be completed within a one to three week time period. We look forward to sharing a variety of these worlds with you.

http://bvw.etc.cmu.edu/content/show

If you are not able to join us in Pittsburgh, please join us live on the web at 6pm December 2nd through our webcast:

To view the webcast, you will need a broadband internet connection, and

• For Windows computers, you will need Windows Media Player 9 or newer.
• For Macintosh OS X, Flip4Mac is recommended.
• GNU/Linux computers, VLC is recommended.

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 beginners at computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

The idea behind Alice was to engage young learners, girls in particular, in computer programming in a fun way. There is no cumbersome “coding” to learn, and the interface makes it impossible to “fail”.

Alice was created and continues to be maintained and developed by faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

There are two versions of Alice, one for middle-schoolers and one for high school and college-level students.

My kids have used it at school, and they were so “into” it that they completed assignments above and beyond what was required “it was a very intuitive program. My sixth grader says “I didn’t have any problems getting to know it. They need to add more items, and if you’re learning it in a class, the teacher doesn’t really have to describe it in detail. We can just figure it out more easily”.