I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the “Gifted”
program at Fowler Drive Elementary (Athens, GA) when I was in the 1st
grade. The mid-80s are a blur now, but I remember one exciting morning vividly.
As was customary, a small group of students and myself were
pulled from each of the 1st grade classrooms located in the Earth Shelter a couple hours into the school day. We were assembled in the
hallway, and instructed by our teacher (whose name I cannot remember) to take our places in front of one of four or five
computers. They were Apple IIs:
We were challenged to make the “Turtle” (a triangle-shaped cursor)
move around the screen. We learned to make the "Turtle" advance by typing the
word “FORWARD” followed by a number. For example:
FORWARD 50
This caused the “Turtle” to “walk” forward 50 steps
(centimeters I think). I found it fascinating that he left a trail behind
courtesy of the pen tied to his tail!
The commands, FORWARD and BACK, changed the “Turtle's” place
on the screen, while LEFT and RIGHT changed the direction in which he faced in
degrees. For example:
LEFT 90
Tells the “Turtle” to rotate 90 degrees to his left.
Throughout that morning, we learned to combine commands and program
the “Turtle” to create shapes like squares, circles, and even flowers…
The “Turtle” was the graphical representation of a
programming language called LOGO. Invented at MIT in 1967, LOGO was the
brainchild of South African mathematician Seymour Papert, and computer
scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Cynthia Solomon. The duo
imagined a computer in every classroom, for every child at a time when almost no
one entertained such ideas for logistical and financial reasons. Papert and Solomon persisted, and LOGO developed into a valuable tool for teaching programming to
children and promoting computational
thinking in early childhood education curriculum.
I strongly encourage you to explore the following related links:
20 things to do with a Computer
Seymor Papert
Cynthia Solomon’s LOGO
A “Wired” article about LOGO
LOGO history, via MIT
Syd Lexia’s LOGO
Math Education Sites
LOGO in action:
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