alice-teacher Welcome to the "s" mailing list

Mon Sep 12 17:06:06 EDT 2011

Wanda,
Here are some items for the newsletter:

----- <Boilerplate about access to different teaching materials:> -----

One source of materials for teaching with Alice:

	http: //www.aliceprogramming.net 

There is a set of instructor materials there, including sample syllabi, projects and solutions, quizzes, assignments, test banks and solutions, some student example worlds… These materials are designed for use with the "Learning to Program with Alice" textbook by Dann, Cooper and Pausch, but they are freely available to school instructors to be used with any textbook, as their development was supported by NSF funding.

They are password protected to preserve the integrity of the solutions so that teachers may use the exercises and exams, with some confidence that students will not have access to these answers and solutions. You may apply for the login and password by contacting Steve Cooper <coopers at cs.stanford.edu> at Stanford University or Barbara J Conover <bconover at purdue.edu>.

Another site that you may wish to check out that would be helpful would be 

	http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/

Maintained by Professor Susan Rogers at Duke University, this site has many great resources in the use of Alice in K-12... You will find a lot of examples, tutorials and projects here that you may find helpful.

Thank all of you for your interest in Alice, and the great work you do with your students.

---- <end of sources boilerplate> ----

----- <about the lists serv> -----
We now have a mailing list for those who are teaching with Alice.

If interested, you may subscribe at: 
	http: alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu mailing list

On this list, Alice teachers are able to ask questions, post ideas and nifty assignments, and support other members of the Alice teachingcommunity. 

The list is moderated to make sure that only those posts that are of interest to the Alice educational community will be distributed.

After subscribing, and being admitted to the list, you may post to this list by sending your email to:

 alice-teachers at lists.andrew.cmu.edu

General information about the mailing list is at:

 https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/alice-teachers

----- <end listserv note> -----

----- <Alice 3 new release notes> -----
The latest update to Alice 3, Version 3.0.3.0.0, has been released and is now available at http://www.alice.org.

Note the following changes in this release:

	• Added one-shots (ability to perform object-level procedures as part of scene setup)
	• Added a clipboard
	• Updated properties panel with ability to change object name, color, opacity, position, vehicle and size.
	• Added camera and object markers

The latest Alice 3 Beta plugin for NetBeans, Alice3ProjectWizard3.0.3.0.0.nbm, is also available, and for those wishing to import and work with Alice 3 Beta projects in Netbeans, you should add this plugin to Netbeans. (If you have a previous version of the plugin installed, it is probably best to uninstall that version, before installing this new release.

It should also be noted that we are experiencing significant difficulties in the interaction between Alice 3 Beta and the latest release of NetBeans version 7.

It is our recommendation for the upcoming semester that teachers who expect to be teaching with Alice 3 Beta and Netbeans that they install and use Netbeans 6.9.1 (Java SE edition).

This version of Netbeans can be found at the following URL: http://netbeans.org/downloads/6.9.1/

As always, please let us know of any problems you encounter.

----- <end of Alice 3 release notes> -----

----- < Alice 2,2 release notes> -----
The latest update to Alice 2.2, dated 8/5/2011, has been released and is now available at http://www.alice.org.

Note the following changes in this release:

* The Mac OS X version is now a universal binary, and is compatible with the latest Mac OS 10.7 (Lion)
* The Mac version now creates a backup folder
* The download version with the "Learning to Program with Alice" worlds has been updated with the worlds for the Third Edition of "Learning to Program with Alice" By Dann, Cooper, and Pausch
* Added new models and updated the gallery
* Added the ability to create a 3D text as a parameter or variable.
* Added the option to enable or disable tooltips.
* Added the option to delete items in a list or array
* Fixed an assortment of problems that had been reported over the last semester

As always, please let us know of any problems you encounter.

----- <end of Alice 2.2 release notes> -----

----- < regarding updating video drivers> -----
We have received reports similar to this one, mostly regarding Alice 3.0 Beta, but sometimes with Alice 2.2:

"During scene setup when you hover over certain objects such as the island or the stool, the screen turns red.  When the cursor is moved to another location we can once again see the normal screen setup window."

There is a new version of Alice 3 available on line which seems to help with these problems.

Often we have found that these issues seem to be related to 
	- outdated video card drivers (particularly if you have switched from XP to Windows 7)
	- hardware acceleration
	- color depth

If at all possible, you might check to see if there are specific updates for your video cards available. Often manufacturers will have a generic, one size fits all update, but you should try to find the specific update for your card.

(Wanda note: I have attached the document with instructions on how to update video drivers)

You can try to reduce hardware acceleration

You can try to reduce color depth from 32 bit to 16 bit.

----- <end video drivers> -----

----- <note concerning FBI-SOS> -----
In our note concerning the FBI-SOS project, we should probably announce the winners from last year:

We agree as well on the selected winners.  To confirm, the group has chosen 
	Zachary Lamperski from Springdale Jr Sr High, Springdale, PA, (8th grade) as our middle school winner and 
	Alec Fortine from Canyon High School, Anaheim Hills, CA (11th grade) as our high school winner.  

I have pictures of Zach, but have not received any from Alec at this time.
----- <end FBI-SOS note> -----

This is all I have for now. Let me know if you have any questions.

Take care,
Don

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