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Greetings all,
Many of you may be familiar with Randy Pausch, a computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon. His "Last Lecture" speech has grabbed the worlds attention. In this lecture he reveals his terminal struggle with pancreatic cancer, and bravely discusses his childhood dreams and how he was able to achieve them. He goes on to stress the importance of helping others to achieve their childhood dreams. Much of his work at Carnegie Mellon was devoted to creating "Alice", a 3D drag and drop programing environment, designed to introduce people to computer programing concepts while they "play" with 3D objects.
After listening to the lecture and hearing about "Alice" I downloaded it. I have
introduced it to some of my elementary school students, and have been amazed with the response. Learning something challenging and new is all of the sudden fun and engaging for them.
This has reminded me of my own struggle to learn Csound. I began to wonder if the drag and drop "mistake proof" Alice approach could help people learning Csound. I know it would! I would like to urge Csound developers to look into it. I would be happy to work with anyone who is interested in developing this kind of engaging teaching shell for Csound.
Here are the links:
www.alice.org (download the Alice software free!)
here is the link to watch Randy Pausch deliver his "Last Lecture":
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184&q=randy+pausch&ei=240QSPHLHpzA4ALSpqGnBA
Best wishes to everyone,
David Hanft
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