Getting to know Alice

Mike Diehl — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:00:00 +0000

After I wrote a review of the Scratch programing environment, one of our readers suggested that I look into the Alice programing environment. http://alice.org/ Well, I've gotten to know Alice and have found it to be quite an impressive programing environment. By the way, I'm always looking for interesting subjects to write about, so if you have suggestions, please email them to me.

Alice is a programing environment that allows students to learn Object Oriented Programing in a compelling 3-D environment. With Alice, students add objects to a 3-D world and use each object's built-in methods to create animations, interactive stories, or games. When the student is satisfied with their work, they can export it in the form of a standard web page that they can share with their friends, or instructors. Though written in, and primarily aimed at Java, most of the concepts and structures demonstrated in Alice are applicable in just about any modern language.

For this article, I'm using Alice version 2.0.7, and you can see the initial screen in Figure 1. Frankly, it looks much like any other IDE. Let's take a look at Figure 2, which is the result of loading one of the example projects. In this case, I've chosen my favorite, the Amusement Park project.

In the upper left panel, we have what I would call the object window. Here we see a list of all of the objects used in the project. Once a user selects an object from this list, they can see a list of methods and properties that belong to that object, in the window below, lower left. From there, a user can click on the “edit” button and edit a given method.

The star of the show, of course, is to be found in the lower center window, where we find the code window. In the main part of the code window, you see the code that comprises the current object or method. Along the bottom you see the code elements that can be used to build programs.

To create an object method, all a student has to do is select the object from the object window, then click on the create a method button for that object. From then on, the student simply drags code segments from the bottom of the screen, onto the code panel. A student can create a method parameter or variable by clicking one of the buttons on the right side of the code.

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Programing Education

Getting to know Alice