1.Creativity in the Classroom with AliceAmany AlKhayat MA TEFL American University In Cairoamany_h@aucegypt.edu

2. Dealing with Digital Natives Online Interaction Content creation Control Rely on tech tools Tech-savvy 3. Teaching Digital Natives- Catering for different learning styles andinterests.- Individualization oflearning andlearner autonomy 4. Meet Alice 5. Meet Alice Alice is a free software that can be downloadedfrom www.alice.org. It was originally developed at the University ofVirginia and then Carnegie Melon University. 6. Purpose The original purpose of this software is to prepare students to learn and understand programming languages. This program is also used currently in the States to teach Spanish to English speakers 7. How it works Alice is a 3D programming software. It enables teachers and students to create animations, videos, or games for sharing them in the classroom or the web 8. How it works The program, through its interactive interface, enables users to drag and drop graphic tiles (that carries the code) to create their stories (story telling Alice) 9. How it works 10. How it works (cont.) It also contains 3D objects such as people, animals, and other objects that the students can use to create a virtual world of their own with animated objects. 11. Language input Using games and animations has become pivotal tool in the classroom provided that the Language input is included and the game or the animation meets the lesson objectives. (Beatty, 2010) 12. Language input 13. Consider the answer 14. First study Location: German University in Cairo, YoungstersSummer Club Duration: Two weeks Language input: Speech acts (Agreeing anddisgreeing) Exploratory 15. Sample 12 students from different Egyptian high schools 2 students were from a British school the restwere from private schools where the medium ofinstruction is English. Convenient sample 16. Experiment The students were taught speech act (the traditional way). Role play was used as an activity The following week, the students were introduced to Alice. The grasped the idea quickly and their task was to produce animations with situations using agreeing and disagreeing 17. Findings More motivated, more creative Spontaneity of interaction between characters(visible) Gender differences 18. Experience in Saudi Arabia Program: Preparatory Year Program (PYP) inPrince Sultan University Learning difficulties: spelling mistakes, lackreading skills, writing problems 19. Study Longitudinal : Ending June 2012 RC students (Reading Circles) and Grammar 107and 117 students The RC students are supposed to create oneepisode of a story that voices certain culturalaspects and also using direct or indirect speechacts or appropriate language input as advised bythe instructor 20. Grammar Two courses are taught in PSU 107 and 117 and the students should also create animations (using modality, conditional If ..etc) 21. Other suggested uses of Alice Teaching vocabulary: Like word attack, teachers can create movies, animations and videos to teach difficult vocabulary 22. How can teachers use it Warm up Examples Thought-provoking activities Can be posted on FB or teachers wiki or website by converting it into a video 23. How can students use it Projects Presentations Tasks 24. Strengths of Alice in EFL classroom Alice is a 3-D programming environment and it isnot required Drag and drop is easy Interactive interface Students can immediately view their animations 25. Weaknesses Stick to gallery Cannot be uploaded directly to the web. It has tobe converted into a video or the user has to install3-D java and other programs 26. Utilizing other applications with Alice Youtube, teachertube Wikis Websites : yola 27. Alice URL: www.alice.org Go to downloads and choose Alice 2.2. It is downloaded as a zip folder. Unzip it and open story telling Alice. You can use the first step by step tutorial to learn how it works. 28. References AlKhayat, A. (2010) Using Storytelling Alice to Motivate English Language Learners . Proceedings of TheInternational Technology, Education and Development (INTED)Conference Beatty, K. (2010) Teaching and Researching: Computer Assisted Language Learning. Pearson: London www.Alice.org http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=downloads/download_alice2.2 http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?p=6740#post6740 What is Alice? M. Moskal, D. Lurie, and S. Cooper, Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Instructional Approach. InProceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference, (Norfolk, VA). Storytelling Alice About page Looking Glass research overview Alice Press Release - 03/10/06 A Preview of Alice 3.0 Alice 3.0 Progress Report http://blog.alice.org/?p=293 Sun collaboration http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=alice3/download 29. Thank you