In contrast to the large number of people who use computers and computer programs in their daily lives, relatively few learn to create their own computer programs. Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to motivate a broad spectrum of middle school students (particularly girls) to learn to program computers through creating short 3D animated movies.
To enable and encourage users to create animated stories, Storytelling Alice includes:
High-level animations that enable users to program social interactions between characters.
A story-based tutorial that introduces users to programming through building a story.
A gallery of 3D characters and scenery with custom animations designed to spark story ideas.
On my current Randy Pausch kick (purchasing his book today, and I have a feeling it will be just a soul-monumental to read as “The Alchemist”, “Haroun and a Sea of Stories”, “Alice in Wonderland”, and “Lord of the Rings” have been for me).
Pausch talked about the project “Alice” - something to help imagination, storytelling, tech, and computer skillz for youth (especially girls, since Girls & Tech = slow to rise).
It reminds me of Dizzywood in a way, and that’s rockin’.
Imagination & exploration of fantastical worlds is so important, it just makes my skin tingle to think about all the opportunities kids will have to extend play online.
I saw this last night with Diane Sawyer and absolutely loved it. I do believe this should be part of EVERYONE’S education, learning experience, understanding:
Disney Online is giving Pirates of the Caribbean Online players the chance to earn double experience points and level up their pirate avatars twice as fast during two in-game events. But it’s not all weekend so pay attention matey!
Both Basic (free-to-play) and Unlimited Access (pay-to-play) players will be able to earn double reputation points in both land and ship battles this Saturday, April 12th… but only between the hours of 12:00 and 3:00 pm (Pacific Time). Pirating for Unlimited Access members will commence again on Sunday, April 13 during the exact same time frame (12:00 - 3:00 pm Pacific Time).
Bonus bounty: later this month Disney Online will be be announcing details about new content that will include a bevy of new weapons, quests, and more… so stay tuned!
Le sigh. I love PotCO. The community just KILLS me. With the addition of the new animations/expressions, etc (such as /bark, /meow, /jig, /flex, /chuckle, /cheer, etc), and the new “wanted ad” esque announcements (/afk for “away from keyboard” and /crew for “looking for crew”) things have changed up a bit.
Before - those who gobbled up the play existence too quickly, reaching the levels of 30+ (including weapons, etc), pirate players would run around helping their guild, giving noobs pirating experience, and playing cards. It was fun to see how bored pirates decided to spend their time helping others - and without too much of a second thought.
It wasn’t rare to see +10 level players drop their current quests to help noobs or low level pirates. Everyone seemed to have a common bond, and the piratey nature of the game made the aggressive nature seem like play-acting or not needed. And if particularly nasty peeps played, they could engage in Player vs Player games.
But now? Now it’s a whole new level of hilarity. Hanging in Tortuga dock last week, users were leaping on random boxes and flexing, doing jigs, etc - as if on display. People engaged in more of the useless community hilarity, instead of track-game play with elements of community.
I’m eager to see how this forms a real community - will it turn like Lord of the Rings online where people group together to create musical bands to play outside pubs? Or relationships like in WoW?
Pirates makes me happy - living out the romantic story-book nature of pirate play in a well kept arena with like-minded rp souls.
A significant development in the online-safety field: Parents in the US now have a toll-free number to call with questions about topics such as social networking, cellphone texting, and virtual worlds. The bilingual hotline (English and Spanish) is sponsored by the Qwest Foundation and operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and is available to “paren. The free service started in February 2007 as a Web site - www.netsmartz411.org - where “parents, guardians, children, teens, educators and law enforcement” could type questions into a form and hear back from NCMEC experts within one business day or search a database of online-safety info.
The new toll-free hotline number is 1.888.NETS411 (1.888.638.7411).
Woot, woots! Save this for your file. Need more? Click that link above and check out the rest of the help Anne from NetFamilyNews shares. She certainly does rock.
