Technology - Alice
Overview
Alice is a deceptively simple program which teaches computer programming through computer animation. As opposed to the rigorous animation course we offer at New Hope Academy, the figures are already drawn and able to animate through commands sent to them. For example, a skater can be instructed to move 20 meters and lift her right leg at the same time, appearing as if she is skating. This is all done in a graphical, mouse driven environment.
There are no textual errors with Alice. Users can make no complier or linking errors. The Alice interface makes directing objects on the screen simple, elegant, easy to understand, easy to decipher and impossible to completely botch up. If errors are made, they are easily found and fixed.
Alice is not a toy language, though. Alice teaches students about object oriented programming, expressions, simple control statements (if, then, else), and techniques such as methods, parameters and inheritance, events and event-handling, functions, loops, indefinite loops, recursion, lists and inheritance. These fundamentals translate directly into any object oriented programming language such as Java, C++ or C#.
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We use the book "Learning to Program with Alice" by Wanda P. Dann, Stephen Cooper and Randy Pausch. More about the book can be found here. |
More information about Alice can be found here.
NHA is Different
New Hope Academy promotes Education through Inspiration & Motivation.
Benefits to School Districts
Communication and Follow-up: Our instructors provide continual updates to all contact persons.
Benefits to Parents
We regularly contact parents to update them on interactive behavior, tests, cooperation, & respect for authority.
Our Two Locations
NHA operates at two locations, but as one school. There is a location in Yardley, PA and Doylestown, PA.