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Storytelling Alice: Presenting programming as a means to the end of storytelling |
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 Dr. Caitlin Kelleher, alumna of the Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech, NSF fellow, and post-doctoral researcher in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University will be presenting her research entitled “Storytelling Alice: presenting programming as a means to the end of storytelling” on Thursday April 19th, 2007 at 3:30pm at Squires, Room 341.
After observing the plummeting numbers of college students intending to major in CS, of which an even smaller number corresponds to female students, Dr. Kelleher developed Storytelling Alice, a programming environment that gives middle school girls a positive first experience with computer programming before they begin to turn away from science related disciplines. Storytelling Alice presents programming as a means to the end of storytelling, a motivating activity for a broad spectrum of middle school girls. More than 250 girls participated in the formative user testing of Storytelling Alice, whose final version includes high-level animations that enable users to program social interaction between characters, a gallery of 3D objects designed to spark story ideas, and a story-based tutorial presented using Stencils, a novel tutorial interaction technique.
Storytelling Alice presents programming as a means to the end of storytelling, a motivating activity for a broad spectrum of middle school girls. More than 250 girls participated in the formative user testing of Storytelling Alice, whose final version includes high-level animations that enable users to program social interaction between characters, a gallery of 3D objects designed to spark story ideas, and a story-based tutorial presented using Stencils, a novel tutorial interaction technique.
For more information on this project aimed at increasing diverse viewpoints that influence technology design, please visit Dr. Kelleher's website, or see a story about Storytelling Alice in Business Week.
This seminar is sponsored by Scholars of the Future Program, http://sof.cs.vt.edu, and the Center for Information Technology Impacts on Children, Youth, and Families, http://www.citicyf.clahs.vt.edu/ |
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