This week, I wanted to back up a bit and post a short video about basic navigation for brand new users to Alice 2.3. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of 3D animation, but you'll find it all works much more smoothly once you have the basic navigation concepts under your belt.

Did you know that universities use Alice to introduce computer science principles to non-computer science majors? It's worth mention, even if you are working with Alice at the elementary school level, that you can always weave a computer science module into your Alice lesson plan. I've recently downloaded NetBeans, a Java IDE (integrated development environment), so that I can demonstrate how what you drop and drag within the Alice screen editor (a type of an IDE itself!) uses the same Java programming principles that professional developers apply to technical projects.

I'd also recommend following this Carnegie Mellon blog to keep up with the ways folks in the education field use Alice as a teaching tool and the pros and cons of using game creation to teach computer science principles.

 http://aliceprojectcmu.blogspot.com/