ALICE & Storytelling ALICE

Just found this great article about Dr. Randy Pausch and his ALICE programs. I've personally been teaching an after-school class featuring Storytelling Alice, a spin-off created especially for middle-schoolers that makes programming simple, engaging, and fun. In the coming months, I plan on sharing screenshots from my students' work with Storytelling Alice, anecdotes, and other experiences. My focus will be on teaching complex skills to populations with special needs, and I'll be developing this as a thesis for my master's program as well.

Gaming for Pain Relief

Video games are being called "the new pain pill" after a study from Simon Fraser University showed that virtual reality games provided very real relief for chronic pain sufferers. When compared to chronic sufferers on a standard drug treatment, the VR group reported substantially lower pain ratings. This is pretty cool news, especially for gaming enthusiasts or people who firmly believe that technology needs to be more integrated into therapy practices. The next step for Diane Gromala, the SFU professor who headed the study, is to develop a way to help chronic pain sufferers manage their pain systematically and implement such technology into standard practices of healthcare professionals.

Next Generation
WIRED Game Life
Canada.com