In the words of TERC, the developers of the ALICE software, the purpose of the ALICE project is to simplify telecommunications for teachers and students. This it does very well.

One of the big challenges we face is the pressure of "teacher-time" and the traditional expectation of classroom management. It is becoming obvious that normal classroom organization works against student access to telecommunications. Physical acess, let alone any organised group work utilising the network is increasingly difficult as classes move from one of two isolated "users" to the goal of "routine" access and enquiry based learning.

The Alice Software Network is designed to combat this.

In their planning, they have focussed on two simple yet worthy goals:

"The first goal is to make network communictaion simple enough for routine use in middle and high school classrooms....The second goal is to make network communication affordable by the full range of schools".

The ALICE software is part of the solution needed by classes to get wide-spread use to networked telecommunications. An outstanding achievement!

 

Postscript 1997

My colleague Bruce Rigby, Group Manager, Learning Technologies, at the Department of Education in Victoria was the leader and instigator of the TERC project in Australia.You can contact him via his Department email.