alice teacher handout

8/6/2019 Alice Teacher Handout

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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 1: What is Alice?

This lesson will teach you: What is Alice? What can Alice do?

What is the benefit of understanding how to use a computer program like Alice? How can I use Alice to improve learning in other topics in my classroom?

What is Alice?Alice is a free program which anyone can download. Alice is used to create 3Danimations and scenes.

What can Alice do?Alice lets you choose a ground (dirt, grass, sand, etc) and then place objects on thatground. You can place objects such as schools, creeks, houses, tents, and more. In

additions, you can also place objects such as animals and people.

Alice lets you animate the objects. You can make people walk around. You can haveanimals that talk when someone walks near them. You can move the camera (the wordused for the point of view) to make it seem like you are the character walking around.This lets you create appealing and captivating demonstrations.

What is the benefit of understanding how to use a computer program like Alice?Computers interpret commands by reading "code". This code is written by computerprogrammers. When you click anywhere on a computer, the computer code decideswhat to do (such as open a menu or close a program). Computer code is the only wayyou can make a computer do something new. All computer programs are written incomputer code.

Alice takes all of the hard computer code-such as 3D calculations-and adds a drag-and-drop graphical way to tell the computer what to do. Alice is a great way to introducestudents into computer programming, which is usually only taught at high school levelsand to select students.

How can I use Alice to improve learning in other topics in my classroom?Alice can be used to create enticing demonstrations and lessons. We have had studentscreate Alice videos in social studies classes giving a tour of a medieval castle, and manyother similar projects. Since Alice is free software that anyone can download, you cangive an assignment for students to create a presentation in Alice instead of a traditionalposter project. Alice presentations tend to be a much better way to share results with aclassroom instead of reading it off of a poster or slideshow.

Alice Teacher Handbook by Woodford County Public Schools, July 2010For help see http://woodfordscience.org or email [email protected]
http://woodfordscience.org/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://woodfordscience.org/


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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 2: Adding Objects and Viewing the World

This lesson will teach you: How to create an Alice world How to add objects to an Alice world

How to view ("play") the world How to move, rotate, and otherwise manipulate objects in an Alice world

How to create an Alice worldTo create your first Alice world, open Alice. You will see a "Welcome to Alice" screen.Near the top there is a row of tabs. Click the tab that says "Templates". Now you will seea display of the different types of ground you can have. Double click on one you like tocreate your world.

How to add objects to an Alice worldNow that you have your Alice world, you can start to add objects to it. Click on thegreen "Add Objects" button near the middle of the screen.

Along the bottom of the screen you will now see a list of categories of objects. Click onany of these. To go back to the category listing, click "Local Gallery" right above the listof objects.- - -

. .

Once you've found an object you want to insert into the world, click on the object and,while holding the mouse button, drag it onto the world preview in the top middle of thescreen. The object will then appear in the world. You can add multiple objects in this way.

How to view ("play") the worldViewing the world is what makes your Alice presentation come to life. Click the "Play"



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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 2: Adding Objects and Viewing the World

button in the top left of Alice. Another window will open up which shows your world.Since you haven't added any animation to your world yet, it won't do anything. This ishow you will eventually interact with and watch your presentations.

How to move, rotate, and otherwise manipulate objects in an Alice world

Now that you've inserted objects, you will want to arrange them in a better order. Noticeon the right side of Alice that, when in Add Objects mode, there is a row of buttons.These buttons control how you interact with the objects when you drag them .

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When you hover over one of these buttons it will tell you what it lets you do tomanipulate the object. The default one, the pointer, is used for moving objects. The rest

let you manipulate objects in other ways. Click on the third button (rotate object). Nowthat you've selected a tool, click and drag one of the objects in the world to rotate it.When you press Play to view the world, the object will be rotated. All of the other tools(such as resize and move up) work in the same way.



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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 3: Programming with Alice I: Like a Book

This lesson will teach you: How computers read computer code How to add commands to an Alice world

How to remove commands from an Alice world How to change the order of commands in Alice

How computers read computer code

Computers always read code in the same way. In Alice, the computer, also known asthe interpreter, reads commands from top to bottom. You can think of it like a book ofinstructions. You start at the first "command", then once you've done that command, youmove down to the next command and do that until you've done all the commands.

Take the following commands:o Peasant: Turn to face Guardo Guard: Rotate 1 /2 rotation clockwiseo Guard: Say "What are you doing here?"

These commands are very easy to read and the computer follows them just as youwould expect. The beauty of Alice is that the commands are in human terms whichanyone can understand.

How to add commands to an Alice world

To add an object to an Alice world, you need to be at the command screen. You can tellit is the command screen if there is a big yellow list in the bottom of the screen. If youdon't see it, you are probably in the Add Object screen. Click "Done" toward the middleright-hand side of the screen. Your screen should look like this:

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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 3: Programming with Alice I: Like a Book

Notice that on the top-left of the screen there is a list of the objects in your world. To adda command to one of the objects (in other words, to animate the object or make it dosomething), click the object name and then drag it into the large yellow box at the bottom-right of the screen. Drag it over top of the text that says "Do nothing" until it turns white,then let go of the mouse button.

A menu will open at your mouse with a list of commands. Hover over one of the options.A "submenu" will now open which shows you other options. For this example, hoverover "move", then choose "forward", then "1 meter". Now the command is inserted!

Click the play button to view the world, and watch as the object moves forward onemeter. Insert some more actions in the same way after that, then play. Notice how theactions all happen in chronological order, just as you would expect. Computers arelogical and will always follow code in the same order.

How to remove commands from an Alice world

Removing commands from an Alice world is very simple. Right click on the left side ofthe command and choose "delete" from the menu that appears.

How to change the order of commands in Alice

To change the order of a command in Alice, simply drag the command to a new location.Click and drag the left side of the command (before the name), and drag it to a newlocation. A green bar will appear to show you where the command will be. Let go of themouse when you're happy with the new position.



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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 4: Programming with Alice II: Changing the Flow

This lesson will teach you: How to add special blocks around commands to change the way they are performed How to perform a series of actions multiple times simply

How to perform actions at the same time (instead of in order) How to add pauses to your world How to add comments to your code

How to add special blocks around commands to change the way they areperformed

In general, Alice reads commands from top to bottom, performing them consecutivelyuntil the last one is finished. However, there are certain things you can do to changethe "flow" of the Alice world. What if you wanted to have two objects move at the sametime, or have an object walk and rotate their head at the same time? What if you wantedto perform a complicated action ten times without repeating the action?

This is where code blocks come in handy. There are different types of "blocks" that youcan place into the code. Once you've placed a block into your code, you can placecommands inside the block. The way these commands are executed, or performed, isaltered by the type of block. For example, if you wanted to make two actions occur at thesame time, you would place them inside a "Do together" block.

All of the command blocks are at the bottom of the screen. You can see them at thebottom of this example:

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To insert one of the code blocks, you will drag the handle on the left into the code. Thenext few examples will explain this in more detail.

How to perform a series of actions multiple times simply

From the bottom of the screen, click and drag the icon that reads "Loop" into the codein the position you want the actions to happen multiple times. When you perform a loop,



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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 4: Programming with Alice II: Changing the Flow

the rest of the code will wait for that code to finish, so if you have an infinite loop, or aloop which executes an infinite number of times, code below that loop block will neverhappen.

Once you've inserted the loop code block into the code, select the number of times youwant the actions to occur. Then, drag the commands into it as if you were moving themaround. Notice that once you've inserted a command into the code block, it expands tofit it.

How to perform actions at the same time (instead of in order)To perform actions at the same time instead of in order one-at-a-time, drag a "Dotogether" code block from the bottom. Then, drag the commands into the code block.

How to add pauses to your worldTo add a pause to your world, drag the "Wait" command from the bottom into your world,then select the time.

How to add comments to your worldIfanother person, such as a student, is reading your code, it can be very difficult for

them to discern what you are doing and for them to modify the code accordingly. This isbecause a series of commands such as "Guard move forward 5 meters" doesn't makesense to humans without inferring why the guard would move forward. You can addcomments to your code to prevent confusion.

Click and drag the white icon with the green text "II" on it into your code, then enterthe comment. The comment can say anything-the computer will skip over it withoutpausing or attempting to interpret it. An example of a good comment is "Peasantattempts to enter the castle" or "Guards bar the castle door".



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Alice Teacher Handbook Lesson 5: Programming with Alice III: Goodies

This lesson will teach you: How to change parameters of actions in order to change the way they function How to control the camera

How to change parameters of actions in order to change the way they function

Most actions let you change the way they occur. For example, if you tell an object tomove forward 5 meters, you can also specify how the object should move or how longit should take to move. Add a move command, then click the arrow next to "more" andchoose different options to change how it behaves.

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How to control the cameraControlling the camera is one of the most useful features of Alice. If you think of standinglooking at your world, you are the camera. If you rotate 1 /4 revolution counter-clockwise,you are rotating the camera and looking at a different view.

The camera can be controlled just like any other object. Drag it from the list on the leftthen add a command such as "rotate" just like any other. Play your world and notice howthe entire view moves to follow the camera. You cannot actually see the camera in anyinstance.


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