teaching Alice to boys -- some ideas
 

Here is an interesting post
[url]http://www.kidslike.info/teaching_alice_to_boys_some_suggestions[/url]

Alice comes with a tutorial of a beautiful ice skater.
Boys have changed this considerably.
In playing with Alice, boys have been
* doing resize to make the ice skater looking very bulky, like a monster.
* doing resize several times so that the size of the person zooms up and then down
* under properties, change filling style to wireframe so she looks like a robot or something
* change color to red (properties) so that she looks like an alien
* change opacity (properties) to 50% to she looks like a ghost
* do iceskater roll (1 revolution) fast so she keeps disappearing into the snow
* change lake color to cyan. It looks eerie.

a beginners tutorial with alien robots -- appeals to boys
 

In the same vein,
here is a beginners tutorial that uses alien robots.
[url]http://www.kidslike.info/programming_alice_lesson_1_alien_robot_teaches_kid_robot_trick[/url]

Boys and Alice
 

I just wanted to add on to this thread. I teach Alice in three Intro to Programming classes that are about 60% boys at the high school level. I haven't had any complaints from boys that Alice is "too girly". When I set up programming challenges to have students learn particular techniques, however, I try to keep the choice of characters up to the students.

One of my assignments was called THE SUPER-STRONG HANDSHAKE. I merely wanted students to learn the "setVehicleTo" method. So I said something like this:
[B]
Create a scene where two characters shake hands. The one character, however, is so strong that she (or he) actually lifts up and "shakes" the other character. [Note: some characters have no elbow joint--like the Coach.][/B]

Students approached that assignment in many different ways. Lots of girls had a girl lifting up a big guy, and many boys designed it so a little old lady lifted up a bigger character. :cool:

Boys also find the kitchen knife and tank pretty quickly.... :)