Last week, I decided to make a new outreach activity for the WIT and WISEST conferences that I usually volunteer at. This new activity, Alien Invasion, uses the Alice programming environment (available here) to teach elementary, junior high, and senior high school students about basic programming concepts such as loops, events, variables, and methods. The estimated time for the activity is 35 minutes teaching and 15+ minutes of self-exploration.

Backstory: You are the commander of an spaceship that was sent to earth. Your mission is to invade earth, capture as many cows as possible, and bring them back to your home planet. You flew around many different farms in the Edmonton area and found the perfect herd of cows to bring home but due to the warm temperatures on Earth, none of the controls on your spaceship work. You must repair your space ship’s controls so that you will be able to fly around the farm, determine when you are close enough to a cow to ‘beam’ it up to your ship, and then fly home.

I have made a quick YouTube video (below) that illustrates how to teach/complete the activity. The three sections at the end (Adding Animations, Changing World/Object Properties, Adding Additional 3D Objects) are optional, and can be integrated into a lesson if time permits.

If you want to use the activity, or have more questions about it, please email me. I am always happy to work with others who have an interest in STEM! Special thanks to Fraser Anderson for helping with the original Virtools version of Alien Invasion.