alice-teacher Version recommendation?

[Don Slater]

I think that it is important to think about the goals for your course. Alice 3.x was designed specifically at this time to support those programs in which students will be writing Java code towards the end of the course. Alice 3.x has features that support this transition from Alice to Java (the ability to import an Alice world into Netbeans, for example), that Alice 2.x does not have.

Alice 2.x was never designed to support a transition to Java, and in fact, some of its underlying features get in the way (it is object based, not object oriented; in other words, procedures are added to the instance of the object so that only that object can execute that procedure. In Alice 3.x, procedures are added to the class, and so all instances of the class in the scene can execute the procedure). Alice 2.x is best used in courses in which students are to be introduced to programming fundamentals, without any particular emphasis on specific language features.) 

Version numbering is tricky. Normally, people would assume that Alice 3.x is a superset of Alice 2.x. But that is not true in this case. A better analogy is Algebra 1 vs Algebra 2. There will come a time when Alice 3.x does replace Alice 2.x, but because Alice 2.x was available and working well for its intended audience, in developing Alice 3.x, we featured on the transition to Java features, expecting that we will add the features that make Alice 3.x a better fit for the Alice 2.x courses. 

Alice 2.x does have a much greater wealth of support materials for instructors, materials that are not yet available for Alice 3.x, although we are working like crazy to develop them.

Consider the following two documents as you make your decision:

	http://help.alice.org/w/file/57857409/AliceSuiteDecisionTree.pdf
	http://help.alice.org/w/file/57914016/AliceSuite.pdf

All the best,
Don Slater


On Nov 9, 2012, at 8:56 AM, "Moran, Deborah - The Academy - Teacher" <deborah.moran at bgreen.kyschools.us> wrote:

> I am brand new to Alice but am impressed by the potential. I have been encouraged to utilize it with my technology students and am excited about the possibilities; however, I must make a recommendation to our administrative team and technology depart as to which version of Alice to install on our school computers. My first inclination was to go with the latest version; however, most of the instructional materials and tutorials/projects on the website relate to version 2.x which from what I've read are not particularly compatible with version 3.1 so I am requesting feedback and suggestions from this list.
> 
> Any suggestions you can offer a newbie would be most appreciated,
> 
> Deborah L. Moran
> Mathematics and Technology Teacher
> The Academy at Eleventh Street
> 877 E 11th Ave
> Bowling Green, KY 42101
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> http://www.b-g.k12.ky.us/olc/teacher.aspx?s=999
> 
> Students must learn to think mathematically and they must think mathematically to learn. - Adding it Up.
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