Stacking game

Type of project: Simple game using keyboard controls

Class: VII
Teacher: Nalini Ujre
Project by: Oishika Ganguly

Overview of the project:

Students were asked to create a simple game in Alice which uses keyboard controls. They have to use the various skills that they have learnt in Alice such as positioning objects precisely, using various procedures/functions, keyboard controls, camera movement etc. to create the game. Students took up the project enthusiastically and one such project is showcased here.

This is the classic game played by young children where rings are stacked on top of each other with the largest ring on the bottom and the smallest on top. The user stacks these rings by pressing the keys on the keyboard (R for red ring, W for white ring etc.)

Alice 3.1 Learning objectives

1.   Understand how to create an initial scene with appropriate objects and settings.

2.   Understanding the use of procedural abstraction.

3.   Understand the use camera markers.

4.   Understand how to manipulate objects through keyboard input.

Project Schedule:

Project task	Start and End dates	Number of periods (40 min)	Activity
Project planning	13.08.13 to 20.08.13	1	Topic selection
Project execution	21.08.13 to 03.09.13	4	Create the game
Showcase the project	03.09.13 to 09.09.13	2	Alice project presentation and PowerPoint presentation to the class. Documenting experience. Evaluation, reflection and analysis of the project

Evaluation Rubric for Student Presentations:

Assessment criteria 1.      Creating an initial scene 2.      Programming in Alice 3.      Keyboard and mouse control, procedural abstraction 4.      Creativity 5.      Powerpoint presentation on the project Total

Max Marks 10 20 10 5 5 50

 Student’s experience

My name is Oishika Ganguly. My aim was to create a game using Alice 3.1for pre-schoolers. The overall experience of creating this game was a new and interesting one. An issue that I had was that I was unable to create a global variable for my torus aka rings. My teachers and I are currently working on creating a successful variable.

This was a very enjoyable experience and I look forward to creating more Alice projects.

Diamond Detectives

Topic: Tracking the Kohinoor diamond

Project Start and End date: 22^nd Jul 2013 to 16^th Sept 2013
Type of project: Social Science
Class: VII
Teacher: Nalini Ujre
Team members: Tejas suresh, Adithya R Pai, Lakshminarayan, Raghunandan D. R., Abhinav Mohanty
Project Overview :

•Our Topic is Kohinoor Diamond of India                           

• Our animation shows how the diamond  passed from one king to another. And how a historian writes a written account by collecting information from various people.

• We have chosen this topic because Kohinoor Diamond  is an important  jewel of India.

•In this Project we have shown how the diamond was found , how it went from one king to another  and finally how did it go to England.

• We obtained a lot of information on the Kohinoor while doing our research and animation.

•This project is targeted student of  Classes 6-8

WHY  ALICE?

•ALICE provides all the props we required to make our project.

• All the procedures ,facilities and  and the settings were  availible.

•It is a 3D animation software which we required for our project.

•It is easy to animate the program.

Our team’s experience working on Alice3.1

Adithya:  I had an amazing experience working with ALICE. At first I had totally got confused on what I had to do but all went well. ThIs helped me to spend my free time in a nice way. I also learned making quizzes, variables, etc. It also gave me more information about my topic Kohinoor Diamond. I thank this school for thinking I am capable of doing these things. I specially thank my teachers for giving me this opportunity.

Tejas: It was really fun! We did a project in history based on the Kohinoor diamond; we just managed to complete it in time! And in the end, it was a grand success!! I enjoyed this project very much and this project taught about how to work as a team and also taught us how to work nder pressure.

Abhinav: My experience through this ALICE CBSE Project has been exhilarating. Our group from class 7 D (Tejas Suresh, Adithya R Pai, P.Lakshmi Narayan and Raghunandan D.R) chose the topic Kohinoor diamond. This taught us a lot about teamwork and being a team. Each of us made a different scene and in the end we merged all together. My job was to create a scene telling the audience about the history of the Kohinoor diamond from the mid 16^th century to present. My characters were a young historian and an old historian. I recorded my voice in two different ways, playing the voice of these two characters. I learnt many new things, while working with ALICE.I tried out new procedure, got everything in place and ended up creating a huge 2.4 MB file (with sound recording). We ended up editing it. I faced many problems such as errors, bugs, etc. Through the last 2 months of utter enjoyment I had lots of fun creating my project and look forward to doing it again 1 year later in the 8^th standard.

Lakshminarayan: This is my experience in the ALICE project. Our topic was about ‘the Kohinoor diamond of India’. I felt it very interesting to make a project based on the diamond. My part in the animation was about the knowledge which the Historian 3 knew. While doing the research on my part, I learnt many new things based on the diamond. It took me nearly 4 days to find the information and start my project. In the start I faced problems in doing the animation because I was not thorough with my information.  After some time I got a hang of it. I started working faster. My friends were also doing well. It took me nearly 3 weeks to complete my project. Thanks to my subject teachers who let us do our project. I also stayed back in school for some days to complete my project. We also had to prepare our Power Point Presentation .I took the in charge to do it .So I asked my friends how to go about it. Quickly I started my PPT and started working on it. In about 7 days I completed my PPT. I showed it to my friends and they liked it. Once it was completely done I showed it to our teacher. He liked it very much. This was my wonderful experience in doing this project.

Raghunandan: Our project was about the Kohinoor Diamond. It was how the Kohinoor Diamond went from one king to another. I was doing the part of the Historian 4 who tells about how the Diamond went from Babur to Ala-ud-din Khilji. I was so exited in the starting because I did not know much about Alice and did not have the information about my topic. So my friend Tejas Suresh helped me in doing this project and at last I finished my project and I learnt so much about the Kohinoor Diamond and I enjoyed a lot doing Alice.

 Pollinators in Peril

Project Start and End date: 24th Jul 2013 to 25^th Sept 2013

Subject : Science

Class: VII

Teacher: Rajasree V R

Team members: Pragya, Kulsoom Saba, Anwesha Mohapatra and Aditi

Overview of the project:

Pollinators are important agents which play a crucial role in the crop production of a particular area. The productivity of crops is directly proportional to the number of pollinators like honey bees and bumble bees .This project is an attempt to make children aware of these small insects in our life .This study shows and how the changes in the environment changes the number of pollinators. This also makes them aware of the need of plants especially the flowering plants around our houses and near our crop fields.

Students were asked to do a project on pollinators using Alice. Students had to use various objects, procedures in Alice to set up the scene according to the situation. This project showcases the the importance of ICT especially software like Alice in teaching and learning science.

Learning objectives:

Subject Learning objectives    1.Understand the importance of pollinators in          an ecosystem    2.Conduct survey efficiently    3. Analyse the data collected.    4. Draw conclusion about the relation ship of           pollinators and crop production.

Alice 3.1 Learning objectives 1.   Understand how to create an initial scene with appropriate objects and settings. 2.    Understand the use of camera markers.     3. Understand the use of variables and arrays 4. Understand the use of control  statements 1.

Project Schedule:

Project task	Start and End dates	Number of periods (40 min)	Activity
Project planning	24.07.13 to 25.07.13	2	1.Selection of the group 2.Selection of the topic
Task scheduling	26.07.13 to 31.07.13	2	Assignment of roles, drafting the project overview, discussion about the topic.
Fact collection and pre-project survey	01.08.13to 21.08.13	4	Collect relevant facts on the topic from sources such as textbook, the Internet and other books (library). Collect the data from the garden near the houses and also from the school garden .discussion and drawing conclusion about the data collected.
Create the animation	22.08.13 to 11.09.13	7	Divide the group and assign the topic for animation.
Showcase the project	12.09.13 to18.09.13	2	Alice project presentation and PowerPoint presentation to the class
Assessment and Reflection	19.09.13 to 25.09.13	2	Review  and reflection on the topic, documenting team members’ experience.

Team member’s experience

Pragya –(Class VII)

When I first got to know that I was doing this project I was very happy and excited for doing this project. Our project was based on pollination in peril; it was the most unique projects of all. First, when we thinking upon the topic, it was very difficult to think something on pollination that we had to present in ALICE. Finally we got an idea of how to do the project. We not only done an ALICE project we have also done a 'power point presentation.' I have also learnt many things upon pollination that I didn’t even know before, I also thank Rajasree ma'am for choosing me in this project. 

Kulsoom (Class VII)

My experience in ALICE: I had a great experience in ALICE. We all distributed our work so that we could complete it in time. I enjoyed working with ALICE.

Aditi (Class VII)

 My experience was nice I was happy when our guide selected me. We did some discussions. While we were doing our project we had more fun. After our project was a success we were happy. We thank our guide to give us an opportunity.

Inculcating values through story time

Project Start and End date: 22^nd Jul 2013 to 16^th Sept 2013

Type of project:  Developing listening skills
Class: VI
Teacher: Pushpa D Hegde
Team members: Ankit, Devarath
Overview of the project:

Listening to the bed time stories have become outdated to these tech-savvy children.  Our grandmothers used to narrate stories with good voice modulation which make us imagine a vague figure of the character of the story.  Now the characters are different and stories may also differ but inculcating the values in the minds of young learners is the same.  By using attractive animated characters, how the greedy dragon steals the goats and eats one after the other without realizing the consequence of eating more quantity at a time.  Later the greedy dragon realizes that one should not be greedy.  Through this story, my team members made the listener see and understand that let’s not be greedy for anything. Similarly one more story about sharing in caring.

Why Alice has been chosen?
The kindergarten children of this era get fascinated by animated pictures.  We do get many CD’s in the market but the stories and the characters are the same old ones.  In Alice they get totally different characters with 3 dimensions and here they enjoy different stories though the moral remains the same.  The eye-catchy animated pictures in ALICE make them go crazy to watch again and again.

This project tries to explore the topic and present the facts in a fun and engaging way. The students will enhance their technical, analytical and social skills through the project.

Learning objectives:

Subject Learning objectives   1.    Understand how value can be inculcated. 2.    Know how the dragon reaches to herd of the goats and steal one after the other. 3.    Understand the characters used in the story 4.    Understand the moral value that lies in the story. 5.    Know the facts related to real man’s life story.

Alice 3.1 Learning objectives   1.    Understand how to create an initial scene with appropriate characters and settings. 2.    Understanding the use of procedural abstraction. 3.    Understand the use of variables and arrays. 4.    Understand how to accept and process user input through “functions”. 5.    Understand how to manipulate objects through keyboard input and mouse input.

Project Schedule:

Project task	Start and End dates	Number of periods (40 min)	Activity
Project planning	23.07.13 to 29.07.13	2	Selection of group, topic
Task scheduling	30.07.13 to 05.08.13	2	Assignment of roles, drafting the project overview, discussion of deliverables, creating a scenario
Fact collection and pre-project survey	06.08.13 to 12.08.13	2	Conduct a survey among the students of the class about their existing knowledge on the topic. Collect relevant facts on the topic from sources such as story books,  the Internet and other books (library).
Create the animation	13.08.13 to 02.09.13	6	Divide the project among the group and create the animation.
Showcase the project	03.09.13 to 09.09.13	2	Alice project presentation and PowerPoint presentation to the Pre-Primary Class
Assessment and Reflection	10.09.13 to 16.09.13	2	Q & A session on the topic, documenting team members’ experience. Evaluation, reflection and analysis of the project by the team members.

List of ALICE characters taken to make the stories attractive:
Family
Dragon
Goat         
Castle
Monkeys