A new way to teach programming

So I've been doing some research to try and find the best language/tool to give to my nephew (10 years old) to try out as a first time programmer. So far I've been leaning towards XNA since it's very easy to work with and the feedback loop of seeing what you're making is pretty quick.

However, while mentioning this to a co-worker, he asked me if I've heard of Alice (http://www.alice.org). I hadn't so I spent some time with it this morning. Here's a quote from their site:

"An educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment."


I must say that this is genius. Even with my coding experience, I was hooked playing around with stuff in their editor. They are definitely on to something with this tool. Within minutes I had a dog in the world that would stand there and wag his tail back in forth.






Does anybody else have any recommendations? I've been out of the school system/university loop a while so I'm not sure what's out there these days.