1. Creativity in the Classroom with
Alice
Amany AlKhayat
MA TEFL American University In Cairo
amany_h@aucegypt.edu

2. Dealing with Digital Natives
 Online Interaction
 Content creation
 Control
 Rely on tech tools
 Tech-savvy

3. Teaching Digital Natives
- Catering for different
learning styles and
interests.
- Individualization of
learning and
learner autonomy

4. Meet Alice

5. Meet Alice
 Alice is a free software that can be downloaded
from www.alice.org.
 It was originally developed at the University of
Virginia and then Carnegie Melon University.

6. Purpose
 The original purpose of this software is to prepare
students to learn and understand programming
languages. This program is also used currently in
the States to teach Spanish to English speakers

7. How it works
 Alice is a 3D programming software. It enables
teachers and students to create animations,
videos, or games for sharing them in the
classroom or the web

8. How it works
 The program, through its interactive interface,
enables users to drag and drop graphic tiles (that
carries the code) to create their stories (story
telling Alice)

9. How it works

10. How it works (cont.)
 It also contains 3D objects such as people,
animals, and other objects that the students can
use to create a virtual world of their own with
animated objects.

11. Language input
 Using games and animations has become pivotal
tool in the classroom provided that the Language
input is included and the game or the animation
meets the lesson objectives. (Beatty, 2010)

12. Language input

13. Consider the answer

14. First study
 Location: German University in Cairo, Youngsters
Summer Club
 Duration: Two weeks
 Language input: Speech acts (Agreeing and
disgreeing)
 Exploratory

15. Sample
 12 students from different Egyptian high schools
 2 students were from a British school the rest
were from private schools where the medium of
instruction is English.
 Convenient sample

16. Experiment
 The students were taught speech act (the
traditional way). Role play was used as an activity
 The following week, the students were introduced
to Alice. The grasped the idea quickly and their
task was to produce animations with situations
using agreeing and disagreeing

17. Findings
 More motivated, more creative
 Spontaneity of interaction between characters
(visible)
 Gender differences

18. Experience in Saudi Arabia
 Program: Preparatory Year Program (PYP) in
Prince Sultan University
 Learning difficulties: spelling mistakes, lack
reading skills, writing problems

19. Study
 Longitudinal : Ending June 2012
 RC students (Reading Circles) and Grammar 107
and 117 students
 The RC students are supposed to create one
episode of a story that voices certain cultural
aspects and also using direct or indirect speech
acts or appropriate language input as advised by
the instructor

20. Grammar
 Two courses are taught in PSU 107 and 117 and
the students should also create animations (using
modality, conditional If …..etc)

21. Other suggested uses of Alice
 Teaching vocabulary: Like word attack, teachers
can create movies, animations and videos to
teach difficult vocabulary

22. How can teachers use it
 Warm up
 Examples
 Thought-provoking activities
 Can be posted on FB or teacher’s wiki or website
by converting it into a video

23. How can students use it
 Projects
 Presentations
 Tasks

24. Strengths of Alice in EFL classroom
 Alice is a 3-D programming environment and it is
not required
 Drag and drop is easy
 Interactive interface
 Students can immediately view their animations

25. Weaknesses
 Stick to gallery
 Cannot be uploaded directly to the web. It has to
be converted into a video or the user has to install
3-D java and other programs

26. Utilizing other applications with Alice
 Youtube, teachertube
 Wikis
 Websites : yola

27. Alice
 URL: www.alice.org
 Go to downloads and choose Alice 2.2. It is
downloaded as a zip folder. Unzip it and open
story telling Alice. You can use the first step by
step tutorial to learn how it works.

28. References
 AlKhayat, A. (2010) Using Storytelling Alice to Motivate English Language Learners . Proceedings of The
International Technology, Education and Development (INTED)Conference
 Beatty, K. (2010) Teaching and Researching: Computer Assisted Language Learning. Pearson: London
 www.Alice.org
 http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice
 http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice2.2
 http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?p=6740#post6740
 What is Alice?
 M. Moskal, D. Lurie, and S. Cooper, Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Instructional Approach. In
Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference, (Norfolk, VA).
 Storytelling Alice About page
 Looking Glass research overview
 Alice Press Release - 03/10/06
 A Preview of Alice 3.0
 Alice 3.0 Progress Report
 http://blog.alice.org/?p=293
 Sun collaboration
 http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=alice3/download

29. Thank you