In an effort to teach high-school and college students the basics of computer programming, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are getting a little help from the Sims.
The university is collaborating with Electronic Arts Inc., which makes the popular video game, on a project that will put Sims characters in Carnegie Mellon’s technology-instruction software. The current version of the software, called Alice, is a free program that the university has released to stoke interest in computer programming. But campus officials are betting that a newer, hipper version of the program will lure more students, especially women, into the computer-science field. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
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