To encourage interest in computer science and particularly software design in problem solving, Florida Tech is holding an Alice animation competition for high school students (middle school students are welcome as well) in Brevard county. Alice, designed by Carnegie Mellon University, is a software tool that helps students learn problem solving in computer science via engaging 3D animation. Student teams create animations using the Alice software to compete in different categories. The competition is supported in part by Google.

Winners

• Lower Division
  • Miniworld: The Blue Apple, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
    
  • Moonball: The Blue Apple, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
    
  • Screenplay: The Blue Apple, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
    
  • Cinematography: The Blue Apple, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
    
  • Multiple-Category: The Blue Apple, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
• Upper Division
  • Screenplay: BookwormSpys, Edgewood Jr./Sr. High School
    

Divsions and Categories

• The competition has two divisions:
  • Upper: Grades 11 and 12
  • Lower: Grade 10 or lower

• Each division has four categories (problems):
  • Mini World
  • Moonball
  • Best Screenplay (Wikipedia entry) -- or best story, open ended in topics, but different from the other three categories
  • Best Cinematography (Wikipedia entry) -- or best artistic animation, open ended in topics, but different from the other three categories

Awards

• Category Awards (8): Each winning team receives a $50 amazon.com gift certificate (more details are in Rules below).
• Multiple-Category Awards (2): Each winning team receives a $50 amazon.com gift certificate and a plaque (more details are in Rules below).

Schedule and Deadlines

• 3/14, Thursday: Announcement of problems
• 4/1, Monday, 5pm EDT: Deadline for submitting team rosters by teachers
• 4/3, Wednesday, 8pm EDT: Deadline for submitting solutions by student teams
• 4/6, Saturday, 9-10am: Demos and Award Presentation
  • Auditorium [Room 118] in Olin Engineering Complex at Florida Tech
  • Directions to Florida Tech campus
    
  • Campus map: Building 36 is Olin Engineering Complex (up is East in this map)
  • [Afterwards, you might want to tour the campus on the Trolley.]

Submission of solutions and team rosters

• Solutions: follow instructions at the submission site
• Team rosters: each teacher emails a list of teams (Excel template) to . By submiting the team roster, each teacher certifies that the teams meet the rules for teams below.

Rules

1. Teams:
   1. Each team can have one, two, or three students--all are students in Brevard county, Florida.
   2. Each student can only be on one team.
   3. Each team can only be in one division (based on the highest grade level of all team members).
   4. Each school can have more than one team.
   5. Each team can participate in one or more (up to all four) categories.
   6. Each team needs a teacher to submit the team roster, which certifies the team meets the rules for teams.
2. Solutions:
   1. Each solution must use Alice 2.3 with textbook worlds and has a2w as the file extension.
   2. Each solution must be non-interactive (this way the judges do not need to know how to interact with the animation).
   3. Each solution needs to finish its execution within 45 seconds (ie, each animation cannot be longer than 45 seconds).
   4. Each solution contains "opening credits" at the beginning of the animation: team name, names of members, school name, and teacher name.
   5. The same solution or a similar solution cannot be submitted to more than one category.
   6. Each solution cannot be more than 20 MB (the submission site will reject a file larger than 20 MB).
3. Submission:
   1. All solutions are submitted via this submission site.
   2. Each team may submit a solution multiple times for a category (for example, to initially try out the submission process, or incorporate improvements), but only the last submitted solution will be kept for judging.
4. Awards:
   1. The winning teams are decided by judges selected by the organizers.
   2. Category Awards:
      • Teams that submit solutions to one or more categories are considered.
      • One winning team in each of the four categories in each of the two divisions (a total of 8 awards).
   3. Multiple-Category Awards:
      • Teams that submit solutions to at least two categories are considered.
      • One winning team in the combination of multiple categories in each of the two divisions (a total of 2 awards).

Resources

• Alice 2.3 with textbook worlds
• Alice tutorials at Duke