Last Lecture Author & Alice Founder Pausch Dies at 47

Randy Pausch, a pioneer of educational videogaming, passed away this week from cancer at age 47. Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” videotaped at Carnegie Mellon where he taught, became an internet sensation last year. I linked to The Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey Zaslow last September, and inadvertently misspelled Dr. Pausch’s last name. Google sent hundreds of visitors to this blog who made the same mistake.

Zaslow went on to co-author a book with Pausch, which has topped the best seller lists. Pausch is beloved by educational videogame enthusiasts because he was one of the founders of Alice, a popular software program for creating animation projects and teaching aspiring programmers how to code. Alice continues to be hosted by Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pausch will be missed.

CSTA Publishes Educational Game Programming Article

I opened the mail today to find the latest issue of CSTA Voice, a quarterly for members of the Computer Science Teachers Association. Late last year Dr. Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of CSTA, and Pat Phillips, Editor of CSTA Voice, arranged to reprint my article, “Programmed to Learn.” The article focuses on using Logo, Scratch, and Alice for teaching STEM topics. The article first appeared in TechEdge, the journal of the Texas Computer Education Association. The article will be printed in three parts in CSTA Voice.

The Computer Science Teachers Association is funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Below is the introductory paragraph from their website, explaining their raison d’être:

The Computer Science Teachers Association is a membership organization that supports and promotes the teaching of computer science and other computing disciplines. CSTA provides opportunities for K-12 teachers and students to better understand the computing disciplines and to more successfully prepare themselves to teach and learn.

The first part of my article, appearing in the March 2008 issue of CSTA Voice, focuses on the programming language Logo and the Logo Foundation at MIT.

CSTA Newsletter Picks Up “Programmed to Learn”

I wrote in September of my article in TechEdge, “Programmed to Learn,” about using Logo, Scratch, and Alice for educational purposes. Dr. Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, indicated CSTA is interested in reprinting the article in the CSTA Voice newsletter, edited by Pat Phillips. This is quite an honor, as CSTA is a tireless advocate of computer science education. Their site is chock full of useful resources, and well worth a visit.