[seul-edu] A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation Introdcution and Participation - www.alicebot.org

["Brenda R. Freedman" <brenda@alicebot.org>]

I recently joined this list and it came about as the Foundation was 
mentioned in one of the seul.org reports as a good educational resource and 
found out about Schoolforge. I ran this by our Board and agreed we would 
participate in the project.

For those of you that are not familiar with ALICE, the project is an award 
winning chatbot program, with a community of over 400 International 
Developers and a strong commitment to free software.  We are licensed under 
the GPL and have recently introduced two new implementations of ALICE; 
Program E (a PHP implementation and Program Z a LISP implementation of 
ALICE).  This past year we have seen more people become interested in ALICE 
as an educational tool ranging from an elementary teacher using ALICE for a 
primary grade vocabulary project to University level applications. We have 
an extensive support community through our mail lists and a plus for people 
using ALICE without much experience is the ability to ask any and all 
questions on our lists.   This is an important factor when considering 
using any type of application in education, or for that matter any use, as 
people fear the most their "questions" are not warranted and they should be 
able to figure whatever is happening in a program out but this is not the 
case in the ALICE community as any and all questions are promptly answered 
by a list member.  Support is as important as the software itself in many 
cases.

As I have been following, one of the goals of Schoolforge is to extend this 
concept to an international community.  The ALICE project now has 
implementations of the software in German, Spanish, French,  Indonesian, 
Portuguese,  Swedish, Dutch and perhaps some others that have been 
translated.

Alicebot.org will again be exhibiting at LinuxWorld in NY in January.  We 
first exhibited in San Francisco last August and the experience was a 
positive one. The people coordinate the Expo (IDG), are supportive of any 
new exhibitor and offer exposure to the press.  As an .org you get 
everything for free and it is a great way to network and showcase 
products.  You do not necessarily have to be an .org to be a part of the 
Pavilion but involved in Linux in some way.  I think LInuxWorld would be a 
great opportunity for Schoolforge and other .orgs to get exposure for the 
coalition.  IDG Is always looking for new ideas an organizations to 
promote.  There is still time to register if any .org is interested, but if 
not, I will be happy to pass the information along to the Publicity 
Director for the show and have information available for interested parties.

You are correct in not delaying getting this information out as soon as 
possible.  I would suggest sending a release to Wired and also ZDNet.  Both 
usually look for interesting and topical stories.  In view of the MS 
settlement, it is definitely worthwhile to explore with as many people as 
possible and let them know about the coalition.  Currently, the MS 
settlement is on the minds and is a "hot topic" of many educational mail 
lists I am subscribed.  I would be happy to post about school forge to 
these groups.  Many are already using Linux in their schools, while others 
(digital divide) are looking more to these type of installation as many of 
these groups use donated computers which can run Linux.

I look forward to the work you are all doing and have a great deal of 
respect for people who give their time, talents and know-how to helping our 
education sector.  It is a sometimes thankless chore, but there is no 
better reward when you can help people learn something new or know that you 
have had a hand in perhaps influencing some young mind.

Brenda Freedman
A.L.I.C.E. Foundation
www.alicebot.org

One other item. I received in the mail yesterday our passes to the Expo 
which if anyone is interested I can send out to you.  It allows free 
admission to the Exhibits.