Alice Founder Delivers Last Speech

I’ve written about the educational programming language Alice in previous articles and posts, starting here. Jeff Zaslow, the “Moving On” columnist for the The Wall Street Journal reported this week on Randy Pauch over at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pauch is a founding father of Alice, and he recently delivered his “final speech.”

Dr. Pauch has pancreatic cancer, and is expected to live only a few months. The speech was recorded so that his sons, ages five, two, and one, can see and hear the speech when they grow older.

The significance of Dr. Pauch’s work with Alice was best summed up in this quote:

Considered one of the nation’s foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop “Alice,” a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

Defying typical stereotypes, Dr. Pauch’s work in introducing the instructional side of video gaming was best summed up in this quote:

He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. “You’d be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away,” he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

This is a great article about a great professor.

References:
Zaslow, J. (2007, September 20). A beloved professor delivers the lecture of a lifetime. The Wall Street Journal, D1. [Online.] Available: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024238402033039.html

 

Update:
Carnegie Mellon has the full video of Randy Pauch’s last speech online here.