Alice 3.0 Progress Report

February 18, 2008

First off, we want to thank you for being patient with us while we work on Alice 3.0. The support we have received from the community has been humbling.

Our original goal was to release Alice in 2008, and that is still our goal, albeit in a more limited capacity. We have gone through some major transitions which have resulted in lengthening our development phase; however, we are working diligently to get Alice 3.0 released as soon as we can.

We are making solid progress with Alice 3.0. Dennis Cosgrove, the Alice chief architect, is readying a "pre-alpha" version for demo at the Alice Tea Party to be held at the SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) conference in March, '08. If you can make it, we would love to see you there. If you cannot make it, we hope to video capture the event for web viewing.

A lot of inquiries have been made regarding how to obtain a copy of Alice 3.0 for beta testing. We have developed a release schedule which will provide opportunity for teachers and their students to use Alice earlier than the general public, while providing the Alice team with feedback and bug tracking.

Our current Alice 3.0 timeline is:

Fall semester 2008 - Internal alpha testing in classrooms at Carnegie Mellon University, Ithaca College, and Saint Joseph's University.

Spring semester 2009 - Limited beta release with testing in pre-qualified high schools and colleges. See below to find out how to join the Alice 3.0 beta testing team.

Summer 2009 - Full Release (Assuming that the beta testing goes according to expectations. Our backup plan would be to run an unlimited, public beta in the Fall semester, 2009.)

**Edit (1/15/09): Our beta program is full. Thank you to all who contacted us with interest in participating!**

If you are interested in teaching with Alice as member of the beta test team for the Spring semester of '09, you must meet the following requirements:

  1. You are a high school or college teacher.
  2. Alice 3.0 will be used as part of an introductory computer science/programming course (not a programming logic or computer literacy course where programming is not a major portion of the course).
  3. A dedicated T.A. (or course assistant) will track bugs and abnormalities in Alice and report them to the team. (A teacher will not be allowed to both teach and track bugs.)
  4. You and your T.A. will be willing to come to Carnegie Mellon in late 2008 to obtain a beta copy of the software and to attend our very first workshop on (1) how to teach and learn with Alice 3.0, and (2) how to provide us with useful feedback that will help us improve the system.

If you think you can meet these requirements, contact us here with the following info:

  1. Name
  2. Email address (this should be your school email account, if you have one)
  3. School name, level (high school or college), and location
  4. Phone number where we can contact you
  5. Class level(s) and size(s)
  6. Any questions or comments

We will contact you with more information once we get a better gauge of how many schools are interested.


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