A pre-college professional development program

In this paper, we describe the results of a four-year collaborative project conducted among six higher education institutions and their partner pre-college school systems across the US. The primary goal of the project was to offer professional development to middle and high school teachers to enable those teachers to create modules and courses to excite their students about computing. The project used Alice, a software program that utilizes 3-D visualization methods, as a medium to create a high-level of interest in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling among middle and high school students, to build understanding of object-based programming. More than 100 middle and high school teachers participated in the project, with approximately 80% of those reporting that they had used what they learned during summer workshops in their classrooms during the subsequent years.