From cbovell at nburlington.com Wed Jan 5 08:52:57 2022 From: cbovell at nburlington.com (Carlos Bovell) Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2022 13:52:57 +0000 Subject: alice-teacher Final Alice VR Demo Video and Lessons Learned In-Reply-To: <1DFD570B-2472-4E7A-B5D1-B1B0A1EB63B0@sxu.edu> References: <1DFD570B-2472-4E7A-B5D1-B1B0A1EB63B0@sxu.edu> Message-ID: Thanks for making this video. I've shown it to all sections of my Intro to Programming class. They were very excited, and I've applied for a small grant to try to purchase the VR technology. We did have one suggestion: the video ends suddenly. Perhaps an ending segment could be added that summarizes features and suggests directions of future development. Carlos ________________________________ From: alice-teachers on behalf of Vanderhyde, James Sent: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 11:56 AM To: Alice educators Subject: Re: alice-teacher Final Alice VR Demo Video and Lessons Learned CAUTION: This is email originated from outside of the organization. Please exercise caution when clicking links, opening attachments, or providing personal information. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wbarnum at elmhurst205.org Sun Jan 9 19:29:02 2022 From: wbarnum at elmhurst205.org (Barnum, William) Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2022 18:29:02 -0600 Subject: alice-teacher Final Alice VR Demo Video and Lessons Learned In-Reply-To: References: <1DFD570B-2472-4E7A-B5D1-B1B0A1EB63B0@sxu.edu> Message-ID: Thanks for the feedback, Carlos. I admit I don't have much skill with video editing or composition, so my work may not do justice to the technology and content. ;-) Good luck with your grant application. My effort was my first try with the technology and a lesson. I'd love to talk to anybody on or off list to discuss how it is going and to mutually troubleshoot. Bill On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 8:13 AM Carlos Bovell via alice-teachers < alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote: > Thanks for making this video. I've shown it to all sections of my Intro to > Programming class. They were very excited, and I've applied for a small > grant to try to purchase the VR technology. We did have one suggestion: the > video ends suddenly. Perhaps an ending segment could be added that > summarizes features and suggests directions of future development. > > > Carlos > ------------------------------ > *From:* alice-teachers nburlington.com at lists.andrew.cmu.edu> on behalf of Vanderhyde, James < > vanderhyde at sxu.edu> > *Sent:* Wednesday, December 1, 2021 11:56 AM > *To:* Alice educators > *Subject:* Re: alice-teacher Final Alice VR Demo Video and Lessons Learned > > CAUTION: This is email originated from outside of the organization. > Please exercise caution when clicking links, opening attachments, or > providing personal information. > > > _______________________________________________ > alice-teachers mailing list > alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers -- This e-mail message contains information that may be?confidential and is the property of the Board of Education of Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205.? It is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed.? If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy, disseminate, distribute, or use this message or any part thereof.? If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete all copies of this message.? Any communication sent or received by District 205 is a public record and may be subject to inspection or copying under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbovell at nburlington.com Tue Jan 25 11:33:01 2022 From: cbovell at nburlington.com (Carlos Bovell) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 16:33:01 +0000 Subject: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans Message-ID: Hi, We have a project where I'm asking the students to make change and output how many 20s, how many 10s, etc will be needed to make the change. A student is trying to fill a number list with the quotients and getting some weird results that gets in the way of his being able to use the quotients elsewhere in his project. This is what we see when we "watch the variables" (see below). Note that two of the elements in the list appear as booleans. Could that be what is causing elsewhere later on when he tries to use these values as numbers? Thanks for taking my question. Carlos Bovell Northern Burlington High School [cid:f96b162f-0389-44f2-8633-98f7c86c3939] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 133674 bytes Desc: image.png URL: From djslater107 at mac.com Tue Jan 25 14:04:19 2022 From: djslater107 at mac.com (Donald Slater) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 14:04:19 -0500 Subject: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Carlos, I am not sure where those boolean values are coming from. Perhaps run a loop before actually beginning the work in which all elements in the lists are initialized to 0 to start. (In there words do not rely on whatever initialization Alice does when you set up the list.) Then as you are watching the variables, slow things down by putting a wait statement after each statement that updates the list so that you can see exactly what is going on. Please keep us posted and let us know if you have any questions. All the best, Don Slater Alice Project > On Jan 25, 2022, at 11:33 AM, Carlos Bovell via alice-teachers wrote: > > Hi, > > We have a project where I'm asking the students to make change and output how many 20s, how many 10s, etc will be needed to make the change. A student is trying to fill a number list with the quotients and getting some weird results that gets in the way of his being able to use the quotients elsewhere in his project. This is what we see when we "watch the variables" (see below). Note that two of the elements in the list appear as booleans. Could that be what is causing elsewhere later on when he tries to use these values as numbers? > > Thanks for taking my question. > > Carlos Bovell > Northern Burlington High School > > > _______________________________________________ > alice-teachers mailing list > alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbovell at nburlington.com Tue Jan 25 14:46:45 2022 From: cbovell at nburlington.com (Carlos Bovell) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 19:46:45 +0000 Subject: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans In-Reply-To: References:

Message-ID: Hi, Thanks for your response. In the example I worked out together with one of my students we started with the number variable set equal to 129. The student begins with a list containing the numbers 20, 10, 5 and 1. Using an "all in order" loop: We divided 129 by the 20 from a list we made. We got 6 after converting to an int. We used the add to the end of the list assignment operator to make 6 the first value of a second, empty list. Then we subtracted 20 * 6 from 129 and replaced the old value of 129 with the new value of 9. Next, we divided 9 by 10 and got 0, but instead of Alice adding 0 to the list, it added false! Next, we subtracted 10 * 0 from 9 to get the "updated" value of 9 (which is the same value that would have been there from the last round). Then we divided 9 by 5 and got 1 (as an int), but instead of Alice adding 1 to the list, it added true! This is what we were wondering about: Is this an error on our part or is it an Alice bug? I'll take your suggestion and try filling the Alice list with zeros, but the thing with a list is that we should be able to use it when we don't know how big it's going to get. If we want to set aside an arbitrary number of slots, I think an array in java is filled with zeros before it's initialized by a programmer -- we can do this because we're saying in advance how big to make it -- but I thought an ArrayList (again, going but what I think happens in java) would be empty and the add() method is used to add to the end of the list, one at a time, using each value to initialize the list, one element at a time, growing the size of the list. With an ArrayList, there is no reason to distinguish between logical size and actual size. Thanks for taking the time to try to help clarify what is going on in our program. Carlos ________________________________ From: alice-teachers on behalf of Donald Slater via alice-teachers Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 2:04 PM To: Alice Teachers Subject: Re: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans CAUTION: This is email originated from outside of the organization. Please exercise caution when clicking links, opening attachments, or providing personal information. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vanderhyde at sxu.edu Tue Jan 25 17:16:01 2022 From: vanderhyde at sxu.edu (Vanderhyde, James) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 22:16:01 +0000 Subject: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans In-Reply-To: References:

Message-ID: <9973673D-78A1-4D6D-A57F-B10190934B54@sxu.edu> It seems to be the int function that is causing the problem. This bug is easy to reproduce (see attached screenshot). If you use floor instead of int, the result is a number, as expected. So I recommend you tell the student to use floor instead of int. The values from int are correct, if you assume false==0 and true==1. There must be a bug in Alice that is converting the output of the int function into a Boolean for those two cases. James ? James Vanderhyde Associate Professor Computer Science Saint Xavier University 3700 W. 103rd St. Chicago, IL 60655 773-298-3454 [cid:506183F9-6977-4579-A472-EECD359F8F7A] On Jan 25, 2022, at 1:04 PM, Donald Slater via alice-teachers > wrote: Carlos, I am not sure where those boolean values are coming from. Perhaps run a loop before actually beginning the work in which all elements in the lists are initialized to 0 to start. (In there words do not rely on whatever initialization Alice does when you set up the list.) Then as you are watching the variables, slow things down by putting a wait statement after each statement that updates the list so that you can see exactly what is going on. Please keep us posted and let us know if you have any questions. All the best, Don Slater Alice Project On Jan 25, 2022, at 11:33 AM, Carlos Bovell via alice-teachers > wrote: Hi, We have a project where I'm asking the students to make change and output how many 20s, how many 10s, etc will be needed to make the change. A student is trying to fill a number list with the quotients and getting some weird results that gets in the way of his being able to use the quotients elsewhere in his project. This is what we see when we "watch the variables" (see below). Note that two of the elements in the list appear as booleans. Could that be what is causing elsewhere later on when he tries to use these values as numbers? Thanks for taking my question. Carlos Bovell Northern Burlington High School _______________________________________________ alice-teachers mailing list alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu To change settings or unsubscribe visit: https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers _______________________________________________ alice-teachers mailing list alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu To change settings or unsubscribe visit: https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screen Shot 2022-01-25 at 4.12.24 PM.png Type: image/png Size: 164809 bytes Desc: Screen Shot 2022-01-25 at 4.12.24 PM.png URL: From djslater107 at mac.com Wed Jan 26 10:00:22 2022 From: djslater107 at mac.com (Donald Slater) Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 10:00:22 -0500 Subject: alice-teacher A number list is being filled with booleans In-Reply-To: <9973673D-78A1-4D6D-A57F-B10190934B54@sxu.edu> References:

<9973673D-78A1-4D6D-A57F-B10190934B54@sxu.edu> Message-ID: Thank you, Carlos and James for cat=ching this bug. It is a bug in Alice, and I am pretty sure that it has something to do with the int function. When I simply assign an int(1) to a number variable, the value ends up as true, per James explanation below. I have passed this bug report onto the dev team, along with my copy of the project. Thank you, again, Don Slater Alice Project > On Jan 25, 2022, at 5:16 PM, Vanderhyde, James wrote: > > It seems to be the int function that is causing the problem. This bug is easy to reproduce (see attached screenshot). If you use floor instead of int, the result is a number, as expected. So I recommend you tell the student to use floor instead of int. > > The values from int are correct, if you assume false==0 and true==1. There must be a bug in Alice that is converting the output of the int function into a Boolean for those two cases. > > James > ? > James Vanderhyde > Associate Professor > Computer Science > Saint Xavier University > 3700 W. 103rd St. > Chicago, IL 60655 > 773-298-3454 > > On Jan 25, 2022, at 1:04 PM, Donald Slater via alice-teachers > wrote: > > Carlos, > I am not sure where those boolean values are coming from. Perhaps run a loop before actually beginning the work in which all elements in the lists are initialized to 0 to start. (In there words do not rely on whatever initialization Alice does when you set up the list.) > > Then as you are watching the variables, slow things down by putting a wait statement after each statement that updates the list so that you can see exactly what is going on. > > Please keep us posted and let us know if you have any questions. > > All the best, > Don Slater > > Alice Project > > >> On Jan 25, 2022, at 11:33 AM, Carlos Bovell via alice-teachers > wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> We have a project where I'm asking the students to make change and output how many 20s, how many 10s, etc will be needed to make the change. A student is trying to fill a number list with the quotients and getting some weird results that gets in the way of his being able to use the quotients elsewhere in his project. This is what we see when we "watch the variables" (see below). Note that two of the elements in the list appear as booleans. Could that be what is causing elsewhere later on when he tries to use these values as numbers? >> >> Thanks for taking my question. >> >> Carlos Bovell >> Northern Burlington High School >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> alice-teachers mailing list >> alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu >> To change settings or unsubscribe visit: >> https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers > _______________________________________________ > alice-teachers mailing list > alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers > _______________________________________________ > alice-teachers mailing list > alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ListProcess.a2w Type: application/octet-stream Size: 186116 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbovell at nburlington.com Wed Jan 26 11:06:05 2022 From: cbovell at nburlington.com (Carlos Bovell) Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 16:06:05 +0000 Subject: alice-teacher For-loop complicated version doesn't show index change when watching the variable Message-ID: Hi, We have another bug to report. We're using the show complicated version feature for loops, and I had our class watch the index variable so we could watch it count the iterations. To our surprise, it said "None" the entire time. So we created a myIndex number variable, set its value to equal index somewhere inside the loop and watched that variable change to see for ourselves that index is indeed keeping track of the iterations. Is there a way to get index to change on the "watch this variable" panel when playing a world? Carlos -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From djslater107 at mac.com Wed Jan 26 12:09:47 2022 From: djslater107 at mac.com (Donald Slater) Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 12:09:47 -0500 Subject: alice-teacher For-loop complicated version doesn't show index change when watching the variable In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1129E95E-7645-4786-8893-CDA93262AB17@mac.com> Again, Thank you very much for this bug catch. I have forwarded the sto the dev team, with a project that demonstrates the issue. I am not sure of the underlying implementation of the loop and the complicated representation of it. It may very well be that the Watch this Variable window / system is created and displayed before index comes into scope. In that case. ?Watch this variable? should not be an option for this variable. Thank you, Don Slater Alice Project > On Jan 26, 2022, at 11:06 AM, Carlos Bovell via alice-teachers wrote: > > Hi, > > We have another bug to report. We're using the show complicated version feature for loops, and I had our class watch the index variable so we could watch it count the iterations. To our surprise, it said "None" the entire time. So we created a myIndex number variable, set its value to equal index somewhere inside the loop and watched that variable change to see for ourselves that index is indeed keeping track of the iterations. > > Is there a way to get index to change on the "watch this variable" panel when playing a world? > > Carlos > _______________________________________________ > alice-teachers mailing list > alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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