VISTA in Wonderland

Yesterday was a wonderful day, because it was the first time I'd worked with Alice. Alice is a 3D computer animation program developed by Carnegie Mellon, and free for public download and usage. Think "Shrek" or "Toy Story": with a wide variety of characters, settings, objects and commands, amateur filmmakers can tackle real-life topics like life in the medieval times, or fictional worlds involving fairies, ogres, spaceships or robots. (You can even visit Wonderland with the White Rabbit and Alice, after whom the program was named.)

Technically Learning helps site schools harness the incredible creative potential of Alice, and develop activities and curriculum for teachers to use when incorporating Alice into their classrooms. Currently, we are working on programming for our partner organization, Technology Access Foundation, as they will be using Alice in their Tech Start program this winter.

I had time to work on my own film for practice. It won't be hitting the indie film circuit anytime soon, and I definitely need to find a better title than "Watch Out, Horsey," but I saw the amazing potential for this tool in classrooms of all subjects. Creative writing teachers can work with students more accustomed to visual culture than pen and paper stories. History teachers can help their students think through alternate versions of history and the repercussions of events that have taken place. There is the obvious technological component -- students are learning computer programming in an accessible way -- but they are also learning the logical, thoughtful ways both stories and computer programs must be written. And, if they are anything like me, they will have a blast doing it!