Word: logo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Schoolchildren find the Logo language a good way to start...
Like thousands of other students across the country, these children are exploiting the advantages of a new electronic-age language called Logo, which in effect allows them to be their own computer programmers...
Most small computers come supplied with a programming language called BASIC, for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Written in the mid-'60s for Dartmouth College students, BASIC assumes a working knowledge of algebra and some technical computer jargon as well. Logo, by contrast, was created with grade-school children in mind. To keep things very, very simple for the user, Logo starts off with a handful of English words that the computer recognizes as commands to make it do things. The word PLAY, for instance, tells a properly equipped computer to play a musical note. Another...
...Logo's immediate result is it establishes a good first impression," says Seymour Papert, 59, the gray-bearded, South African-born M.I.T. mathematician whose theoretical work in the arcane field of artificial intelligence led to Logo. "It convinces the child that he can master the machine. It lets him say, 'I'm the boss.' " Says Dr. Sylvia Weir, a pediatrician who works with the Educational Computing Group at M.I.T: "People have usually considered the stupid thing in the classroom the child. Now the stupid thing, as it were, is the computer. And the child...
...teach the triangular Logo turtle a new command-in effect, to write a computer program-the child simply types the word TO followed by some step-by-step instructions. For example, here is a program that tells the computer to draw a circle on the screen...