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DickBaldwin
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Default 12-19-2008, 10:13 AM

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Originally Posted by RobMikeMom View Post
My son is just starting learning Alice 2.0. He is 10.5 years old, and has taken off with creating worlds in Alice 2.0. We plan to use Dick Baldwin's lessons to give him a GOOD intro to computer programming class using Alice. He should be able to finish those lessons by the time he turns 11 in June. And since the idea of learning Alice is so that they can then move onto more "real" programming with a good foundation, it seems that by the time Alice 3.0 is released, he will already have "moved on" to the "next step". (My preference is Visual Basic .NET but he may decide to go for Java so that he can use it in Roblox, too. I wll be able to handle helping him learn whichever he chooses.)

Would Alice 3.0 be a good tool for his "next step" in learning computer programming after "mastering" Alice 2.0 since he can advance into Java with it? Or will he be better off just moving onto VB.NET and/or some other Java environment at that point?

Thanks for your opinion,
See lessons 1600 through 1630 at http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocint.htm for when your son has mastered Alice 2.0 and is ready to move on to something more rigorous. It should mesh well with Alice 3.0 if and when Alice 3.0 becomes available.

Also see http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-plan/101, which is where I am spending a lot of time these days, getting into the nuts and bolts of the free Java multimedia library that Barb Ericson has provided. I am currently publishing a series of tutorial lessons designed to explain what makes her multimedia library tick.

If your son decides to go the .net route, I would recommend C# instead of VB. The C# syntax and concept is much closer to C/C++ and Java than is the VB syntax. VB continues to be in a world all its own.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Last edited by DickBaldwin; 12-21-2008 at 09:24 PM.
   
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