32 computer teachers were gathered in the Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University, taking a 3 day workshop on 'Alice', a 3d authoring authoring tool, and a teaching approach called Media Computation. Originally developed in the late 1990s at Carnegie Mellon University, 'Alice' evolved into a teaching tool designed to stimulate student interesting in computer programming through developing animated movies and games.

Though the demand for computer programmers has increased, since the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, the number of students choosing programming classes has decreased -- especially among minorities and women.

W. Brett McKenzie, an early Alice adaptor and the associate professor of computer-information systems at Roger Williams, invited the workshop to RWU.

...the Roger Williams workshop is the first time that Alice has been paired with Media Computation, which uses a set of computer files that enables users to work with sounds and images.

“Alice is a good way to get them interested, and then be able to take them on to the more ‘normal’ programming languages,” he said.

There are several textbooks on Alice available and the program is available for free at www.alice.org.