davidbau.com

Teaching Logo

This morning before work I have a special event. I will be visiting my son's second-grade class to try to teach a little programming.

We will be using Logo. Although the school is lucky enough to have a laptop for every student, they don't have any programming software on the computers. But naturally they do have web browsers. So I have set up a little web page here with the Turtle Tracks applet for the kids to try using.

Did you ever use Logo as a kid? It doesn't seem to be much in vogue these days, but it is still around, just as fun as ever.

Update: It went great! There is a spectrum of computer comfort in second grade - many kids had no problems zooming through, but others got confused by things like losing overlapping windows behind one another. We managed to get through most of the worksheet in an hour.

My favorite part of teaching second graders is their enthusiasm. "OK, so I told you I am going to teach you how to program a computer. Who wants to see the programming window?" (All hands go up.) "Okay, then press the Start button..."

When seven-year-olds see Logo's commandline prompt, they don't sit quietly. Twenty kids, all at once: "Ooooh wow! That's SO coooool!"

Who would have imagined opening a command window was SO cool?

My Logo page is here.

Posted by David at May 10, 2006 08:04 AM