From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 02 2003 - 14:10:26 EDT
July 2, 2003 == MEDIA ADVISORY
A programming environment named Alice will equip middle school students to
design and animate their own computer Wonderlands at a Calvin College summer
computer camp.
Entitled "Telling Stories with Computer Programming," the camp will run July 7
through 11 from 9:30 a.m. to noon for girls and from 1:30 to 4 p.m. for boys on
the Calvin campus, inspiring children from the college's Pathways to
Possibilities program to consider careers in computer programming.
Alice enables its users to build virtual worlds - amusement parks, ponds,
farms, space stations and other scenarios - populated with animated human
characters and animals.
As students grow more adept with the program, they will be able to tell fairly
complicated stories in their little worlds. As they do so, they will learn
basic computer programming.
"These are methods," said David Laverell, the Calvin professor of computer
science who created the camp, as he rotated a chicken in its computer
environment by pointing and clicking on Alice's menu options. "That's what they
will learn in their first computer science course. I would call them
functions."
Laverell first encountered Alice at a computer conference. The program was
designed at Carnegie Mellon University to prepare high school students for
their first college level computer programming course.
Laverell also got the idea of using Alice with younger children from the
conference. "I met this young gal who was a graduate student at Carnegie
Mellon. She sat across the table from me, and I eavesdropped a little bit. I
heard her say she was using it with middle school kids."
After returning to Calvin, Laverell approached Rhae-Ann Booker, the college's
director of Pre-College Programs with the idea of introducing Alice to the
children in the Pathways program. "If you have the program and the will and the
desire to connect with youth," she responded, "I have the kids."
The Pathways program partners with churches in West Michigan, using a variety
of activities to inspire children to pursue post-high school educational
options. (There are also satellite Pathways programs on Indian reservations in
New Mexico and Arizona and at churches in California.)
Booker decided to offer the programming camp to the 15 Pathways partner
churches in Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Holland. "We are using this summer pilot
experience to see if this could be incorporated into the regular Pathways
program. Priority for participation will be given to youth that come through
the Pathways churches and some other churches that we have special partnerships
with," she said.
Booker said the computer camp was a good fit for Pathways: "I'm hoping that we
get lots of 6th through 8th graders to participate in this program, to consider
computer programming as a career goal and to build their aspirations for
college enrollment."
For more information about "Telling Stories with Computer Programming,"
contact Rhae-Ann Booker at (616) 526-6749 or e-mail her at rbooker@calvin.edu
~written by media relations staff writer Myrna Anderson
-end-
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