Logo

Age Range: 5-Adult
Platforms: DOS, Windows, and Macintosh
Medium: Diskette
Cost: $99.95

Company: Terrapin Software
Phone: (617) 492-0660

Description:

In the purest sense, Logo is a programming language; it is a full-featured computer language derived from LISP, the language of artificial intelligence. More important, however, Logo is a language for learning and thinking. Logo provides an environment where students assume the role of teacher. As a teacher, they must:

• understand the knowledge to be taught
• plan an approach to impart this knowledge
• break the knowledge into small, understandable chunks
• know how to clearly communicate the knowledge
• establish this new knowledge as the foundation for future learning
• be aware of and build on knowledge that the learner already has
• be receptive to exploring new ideas as they appear
• respond to the learner's (computer's) misunderstandings and errors

Students do this in Logo by:

• experimenting with Logo commands to understand them and be confident in their use
• planning their task and organize it into its various components
• writing a set of instructions to perform each small task
• constructing a program to perform all the tasks in the right order
• evaluating their program to assess whether the task is performed correctly
• debugging their program by locating and correcting errors or restructuring their approach

Logo is not limited to any particular topic or subject area. However, it is most useful for exploring mathematics, as Logo's turtle graphics provides a natural mathematical environment. Since the turtle moves in distances and turns in degrees, studying geometry by constructing and investigating polygons and figures makes Logo a powerful learning tool.

Designed at MIT as a language for learning, Logo is by its nature:

• friendly
• extensible
• forgiving
• flexible
• powerful

So although Logo is a programming language, it is better thought of as a language for learning; a language that encourages students to explore, to learn, and to think.

Logo's best known feature is the turtle, a triangular cursor used to create graphics. Even young children quickly learn to move and turn the turtle using easily-remembered, intuitive commands. Just using turtle graphics, you can progress from drawing simple shapes with easy-to-learn commands to creating complex figures using quite sophisticated programming techniques. While turtle graphics are an excellent way to begin to learn Logo, you should view them as an introduction and building block, not as the end of a learning adventure. There is much more that you can do with Logo. For a quick lesson in Logo, click here

Professor Seymour Papert, designer of the Logo language, tells us what is important about Logo in his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas (p. 6).

"Two fundamental ideas run through this book. The first is that it is possible to

design computers so that learning to communicate with them can be a natural process,

more like learning French by living in France than like trying to learn it through the

unnatural process of American foreign-language instruction in classrooms. Second,

learning to communicate with a computer may change the way other learning takes

place....We are learning how to make computers with which children love to

communicate. When this communication occurs, children learn mathematics as a

living language. Moreover, mathematical communication and alphabetic

communication are thereby both transformed from the alien and therefore difficult

things they are for most children into natural and therefore easy ones. The idea of

"talking mathematics" to a computer can be generalized to a view of learning

mathematics in "Mathland" that is to say, in a context which is to learning

mathematics what living in France is to learning French."

A timeless piece of software, Logo is as worthwhile now as when it was introduced. After more than a decade of Logo use in schools, a 1990 survey of past and current teachers of Logo showed that an amazing 98% believed that Logo was still appropriate in the classroom.

• First graders in New Hampshire use a single-keystroke version of Logo to move the turtle and explore shapes and lines.
• Second and third graders in Arizona learn about polygons using Logo.
• Fourth graders in California program a miniature golf game in Logo.
• Fifth graders in Massachusetts learn the geography of their state by drawing a map in Logo.
• Middle school students in Kentucky use Logo to control robotics.
• High school girls conquer "mathphobia" in a summer program at Mount Holyoke
• A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses a special version of Logo to teach music theory.

The teacher is most important to students' learning. There are many approaches to teaching Logo, or guiding or facilitating Logo learning.

Often, the student creates his or her own task, one that is personally motivating and challenging. The classroom teacher then serves as a facilitator, helping students understand new Logo commands that might be useful; suggesting approaches to the task; helping determine where and why things are not going as expected; and offering support, suggestions and encouragement, when needed. Logo is a participatory, hands-on environment where both student-teacher and student-student interactions are important.

The Logo Foundation, in cooperation with the Global SchoolNet Foundation, manages a Logo discussion group available to anyone with access to Internet E-mail. To join this Logo listserv discussion group, send an E-mail message to:

majordomo@gsn.org

with the only line in the message: subscribe Logo-L

To see what students and teachers say about Logo, click here

To see comparisons of Logo with other educational software, click here

To inspect Logo research, click here

For further information, click here

We hope you found what you needed on this page. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me.



Howard J. Bender, Ph.D.
President
The Education Process Improvement Center, Inc.
P.O. Box 186
Riverdale, Maryland 20738
hjbender@epicent.com