research-article

Engaging middle school teachers and students with alice in a diverse set of subjects

Authors:

Susan H. Rodger,

Gaetjens Lezin,

Deborah Nelson,

Mercedes Lopez,

Stephen Cooper,

Don SlaterAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '09: Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 271 - 275

https://doi.org/10.1145/1508865.1508967

Published: 04 March 2009 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the integration of the Alice 3D virtual worlds environment into a diverse set of subjects in middle school, including the development of tutorials, example worlds and lesson plans. In the summer of 2008 our experiences with middle school teachers included three-weeks of training in Alice and guidance in the development of lesson plans. Our experiences with middle school students involved two one-week summer camps of instruction in Alice. We found both the teachers and the students strongly engaged with Alice. The teachers created lesson plans with Alice worlds to interactively teach a topic and other lesson plans in which students build an Alice world on a particular topic either from scratch or using a template world. The students in the Alice camps had both instruction in Alice and free time to develop Alice worlds of their choice. We found that the students used a large variety of basic Alice concepts and computer science concepts in the worlds they built in their free time.

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Cited By

Mishra DSingh SKhan Akumar SDwivedi P(2023)Comparison of Didactic Lectures and Activity-Based Learning for Teaching First-Professional MBBS Students in the Subject of AnatomyCureus10.7759/cureus.51106Online publication date: 26-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.51106
Mtshali T(2023)The impact of TikTok videos in creative designs of house plans in civil technology’s practical assessment tasksINSANIA : Jurnal Pemikiran Alternatif Kependidikan10.24090/insania.v28i1.788728:1(115-132)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.24090/insania.v28i1.7887
Kaur GJordan KKaur JDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming EducationProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569877(827-833)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569877
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Index Terms

Engaging middle school teachers and students with alice in a diverse set of subjects
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '09: Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2009

612 pages

ISBN:9781605581835

DOI:10.1145/1508865

General Chairs:
Sue Fitzgerald
Metropolitan State University
,
Mark Guzdial
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Gary Lewandowski
Xavier University
,
Steven Wolfman
University of British Columbia

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 41, Issue 1
SIGCSE '09
March 2009
553 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/1539024
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 04 March 2009

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March 4 - 7, 2009

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Cited By

Mishra DSingh SKhan Akumar SDwivedi P(2023)Comparison of Didactic Lectures and Activity-Based Learning for Teaching First-Professional MBBS Students in the Subject of AnatomyCureus10.7759/cureus.51106Online publication date: 26-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.51106
Mtshali T(2023)The impact of TikTok videos in creative designs of house plans in civil technology’s practical assessment tasksINSANIA : Jurnal Pemikiran Alternatif Kependidikan10.24090/insania.v28i1.788728:1(115-132)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.24090/insania.v28i1.7887
Kaur GJordan KKaur JDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming EducationProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569877(827-833)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569877
M. Alshikhabobakr HM. Khan SM. Gedawy HM. Hussein NRazak S(2020)Gamified Stories in History ClassroomsProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers10.1145/3436756.3437024(76-81)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3436756.3437024
Celepkolu MFussell DGaldo ABoyer KWiebe EMott BLester JZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)Exploring Middle School Students' Reflections on the Infusion of CS into Science ClassroomsProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366871(671-677)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366871
Wiebe ELondon JAksit OMott BBoyer KLester JHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones MHeckman SZhang J(2019)Development of a Lean Computational Thinking Abilities Assessment for Middle Grades StudentsProceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3287324.3287390(456-461)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3287324.3287390
Buitrago Flórez FCasallas RHernández MReyes ARestrepo SDanies G(2017)Changing a Generation’s Way of Thinking: Teaching Computational Thinking Through ProgrammingReview of Educational Research10.3102/003465431771009687:4(834-860)Online publication date: 23-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654317710096
Von Wangenheim AGresse von Wangenheim CPacheco FHauck JFerreira M(2017)Motivating Teachers to Teach Computing in Middle School â€“ A Case Study of a Physical Computing Taster Workshop for K-12 TeachersInternational Journal of Computer Science Education in Schools10.21585/ijcses.v1i4.171:4(35-49)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.21585/ijcses.v1i4.17
Assiter KWiseman C(2016)Exploratory learning with AliceJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2904127.290413031:4(21-27)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2904127.2904130
Parmar DIsaac JBabu SD'Souza NLeonard AJorg SGundersen KDaily S(2016)Programming moves: Design and evaluation of applying embodied interaction in virtual environments to enhance computational thinking in middle school students2016 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR)10.1109/VR.2016.7504696(131-140)Online publication date: Mar-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2016.7504696
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