The first workshop started today. Professor Rodger and Liz went through some introductory tutorials. The teachers seemed very excited to use Alice. It was a little rough at the beginning with some teachers struggling with getting Alice to download and open properly. But once everyone got set up it started to move more smoothly.
Tuesday, June 15thToday they continued with Liz's four part tutorial. They also had some time to work on a world they created themselves. I think this was good for them to have to figure out things themselves. It also led to a lot more frustrations when the teachers were trying to figure out how to move the objects exactly how they want. Tomorrow I will be presenting a tutorial.
Wednesday, June 16thToday Jenna and I both presented tutorials. The one I did was how to put a head-shot pictures on a person in Alice. This allows you to make an Alice world with the characters being anyone you want (yourself, a friend, Oprah... etc). Presenting went pretty well. I could definitely tell that some teachers went faster than others. There was a big difference with this one since some had already had their pictures ready while some others had to find a picture online and crop it before they could import it to Alice.
Today the lunch talk was about energy efficiency. He focused primarily on how we can match energy supply with the demand cycles. He also talked about methods to save energy during idle periods. It has been interesting to get to learn about different CS research topics each week.
Thursday, June 17thMore tutorials today. We taught some of the more advanced concepts today. We didn't have time for my tutorial today so I will present tomorrow
Friday, June 18thToday was the last day of the workshop. I did a tutorial with lists. The goal was to make several ninjas spin together, then kick one by one without having to write all the code out for each one seperately. That went pretty well. They seemed to understand it.
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