gerrie@hpfclp.HP.COM (Gerrie Shults) (01/20/88)
/ hpfclp:comp.lang.misc / jbrown@ihopa.ATT.COM (Jeffery Brown) / 1:55 pm Jan 18, 1988 / |(I understand |that "logo" is a graphics-based educational language -- does anyone |have any experience with it?) | | Jeff Brown | ..!ihnp4!ihopa!jbrown or ..!ihnp4!ihlpf!jbrown | AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il. | (312) 979-5370 Logo is an excellent language for teaching beginning programming concepts. I think Scheme would be better at the high school level, but Logo is probably easier to find in your price range. Scheme has a cleaner syntax, though some beginners might be turned off by all the parentheses. Logo is also a dialect of Lisp, but it eschews parentheses for most of the things that beginners would do. Although it is best known for its graphics subset, it is far more capable than just drawing pictures. It is a solid general purpose programming language which supports recursion and symbolic programming. A few years ago I helped my wife implement a simple symbolic algebra program for addition, subtraction, multiplication and simplification of polynomials in Logo. This was based on an example from "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", by Abelson and Sussman (MIT Press, 1984). The target students for the project were secondary level. For the past year I have been teaching Logo to grade school children. I do this two mornings a week in conjunction with a Hewlett-Packard sponsored Visiting Scientist Program, which gives HP employees some time to work with local public schools at all grade levels. I have no personal experience with teaching Logo to older children, but it works very well with younger ones. I use the graphics part of the language primarily with these kids. I have introduced some of the symbolic programming capabilities to them, but had to be careful about not boring them. For the educational philosophy behind the creation of Logo the book "Mindstorms", by Seymour Papert, the language's primary inventor, is excellent. MIT Press also publishes several additional books about the educational uses of Logo. There is a 3 volume series by Brian Harvey entitled "Computer Science Logo Style", which sounds very good, though I have not seen any of the volumes. There is also "Exploring Language with Logo" by Goldenberg and Feurzeig. I have this book. I haven't gotten through the whole book yet, but have been impressed with the first two or three chapters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gerrie Shults Hewlett-Packard Company phone: (303) 229-3709 3404 E. Harmony Rd. uucp: {ihnp4|hplabs}!hpfcla!gerrie Fort Collins, CO 80525-9599 internet: gerrie%hfpclp@hplabs.HP.COM
curry@hplchm.HP.COM (Bo Curry) (01/23/88)
Could you recommend a good, rather inexpensive (<$150) Logo implementation for PC compatibles? Thanks, Bo Curry (hplabs!hplchm!curry)
mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason) (01/23/88)
In article <7210001@hpfclp.HP.COM> gerrie@hpfclp.HP.COM (Gerrie Shults) writes: >Logo is an excellent language for teaching beginning programming concepts. >I think Scheme would be better at the high school level, but Logo is >probably easier to find in your price range. Scheme has a cleaner syntax, >though some beginners might be turned off by all the parentheses. Logo is >also a dialect of Lisp, but it eschews parentheses for most of the things >that beginners would do. ... > ... There is a 3 volume series by Brian Harvey >entitled "Computer Science Logo Style", which sounds very good, though >I have not seen any of the volumes. I have these books (MIT Press 1985-1987) and I think they're great. They have just about convinced me that we should be using Logo in our intro programming course for Computer Science majors (we currently use Pascal). When combined with the free (though somewhat slow) Logo that Harvey posted in volume 10 of comp.sources.unix, it makes a pretty good exploratory programming environment: Lisp without the intimidating bits. I don't have a graphics terminal, so I didn't even gen it to include turtle support, & I STILL think it's great. (BTW there's an unpleasant but VERY weird bug, so talk to Brian or me before you try to use it.) ../Dave