Randy Pausch

You have been hearing this man's name a lot, especially since he succumbed to Pancreatic Cancer last week. There are too many wonderful people being afflicted with this disease. It took Michael Landon, the Academic Dean/Provost of my college, and now Randy Pausch. I feel for his wife and children. I am glad to see that they seem to have a vast support system during this terrible time. Dr. Pausch left quite a legacy with his Last Lecture and his book. He also left another legacy that piqued my interest.

In partnership with some of his other professors at Carnegie Mellon, he created a teaching tool called Alice. It is available as a free download at www.alice.org. It teaches students to create an animation program or a video game using Java or C++. Instead of having to type all the commands, the novice programmer can use drag and drop tiles.

I plan to email the computer teacher and computer graphics teacher about this program and hopefully they will try it. Rest in Peace, Dr. Pausch.