Carnegie Mellon University Teams with EA

Carnegie Mellon University and Electronic Arts today announced a special collaboration. This new alliance will "revolutionize how computer programming is taught," according to the two partners. The way that EA and Carnegie Mellon plan on doing that is via the Alice programming software.

"Instead of manipulating numbers and code, the Alice programming language lets students drag and drop 3-D characters - people, houses or animals - into scenes on the computer screen, move them around and tell stories as the student is learning the basics of programming," said the release by EA. "A great strength lies in making abstract concepts concrete in the eyes of first-time programmers. The numbers of students studying computer science in U.S. colleges and universities has dropped 50 percent in the last five years.