🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17lq4tINN7uv@agate.berkeley.edu> bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>People who use Logo with very young children often set up a simple procedure
>that allows the child to "drive" the turtle with single keystrokes.  For
>example:
>
>to instant
>make "char readchar
>if :char = "F [fd 10]
>if :char = "B [bk 10]
>if :char = "L [lt 15]
>if :char = "R [rt 15]
>if :char = "U [penup]
>if :char = "D [pendown]
>instant
>end


I am asking the following question for the purpose of learning something
new, and not for provocation.

Why would you want to teach Logo to very young children?  As I understand
it, Logo is a tool for developing math and programming skills.  But at the
level described above, it seems to me that there is very little educational
(math and programming) value to a session in which the very young kid press
some buttons on the keyboard and watch the effect on a graphics display.
Would it not be more educational to use more entertaining games that are
not related to a computer (I could think of a dozen of so board and card
games that develop the concepts of counting, addition etc.), or computer
educational games like Number Maze et el?

Maybe a more general question is what is the optimal age (or skill level,
if you like), if any, to introduce Logo to kids?

One last question: did any of the netters have any bad experience in
exposing a kid to Logo before he or she was ready for it?



Chuck Shavit
chuck@ksr.com