Slashdot Mirror

I've been working with my 7 year old on Logo, he really enjoys the lessons and visual feedback from turtle graphics. I decided not to reinvent the wheel, and purchased Terrapin Logo. Actually I purchased their Kinderlogo product,which is great for younger kids and includes a very nice and tested curriculum, so you can just teach from the lessons instead of having to come up with them. They are more than just "coding" exercises, they offer some decent comp sci stuff and some nice art and logic skills for working with computer graphics as well. If kids are young, K-3 grade this is a pretty attractive package. I also purchased the full Terrapin Logo because it supports the Lego Mindstorms NXT modules and sensors, I figured once he got his coding skills up we could build our own physical turtle and start fiddling with basic robotics. After Logo, I assume he'll pick the next language, though I'll probably direct him towards Python. I really recommend Terrapin Logo for younger programming students, these guys know how to teach kids programming/comp sci. http://www.terrapinlogo.com/Kinderlogo.php http://www.terrapinlogo.com/terrapin-logo.php

I've been working with my 7 year old on Logo, he really enjoys the lessons and visual feedback from turtle graphics. I decided not to reinvent the wheel, and purchased Terrapin Logo. Actually I purchased their Kinderlogo product,which is great for younger kids and includes a very nice and tested curriculum, so you can just teach from the lessons instead of having to come up with them. They are more than just "coding" exercises, they offer some decent comp sci stuff and some nice art and logic skills for working with computer graphics as well. If kids are young, K-3 grade this is a pretty attractive package. I also purchased the full Terrapin Logo because it supports the Lego Mindstorms NXT modules and sensors, I figured once he got his coding skills up we could build our own physical turtle and start fiddling with basic robotics. After Logo, I assume he'll pick the next language, though I'll probably direct him towards Python. I really recommend Terrapin Logo for younger programming students, these guys know how to teach kids programming/comp sci. http://www.terrapinlogo.com/Kinderlogo.php http://www.terrapinlogo.com/terrapin-logo.php

Um, Beebot?

http://www.terrapinlogo.com/bee-botmain.php

I think it's missing cameras and wings.

Some of the commercial Logos (like Microworlds and Terrapin Logo) have considerably more multimedia capabilities. In some ways the language as implemented in those products is dumbed-down, though compared to any "game construction kit" or similar product, they offer tremendous flexibility. They are still real programming environments.

StarLogo is more of a computer science kind of Logo -- all about massive parrallelism. Which can be very fun and motivating as well, but probably requires a different personality to enjoy. The Free logos are still pretty much old-school, triangles on the screen kind of deals.

Of course, get her Lego Logo kits, and no one can resist that.

I learned to program way back in third grade with apple basic and logowriter. Basic is gone, unless you can find an old Apple II lying around, but logowriter still exists

You're forgetting I-Worm.LogoLogic.A. This, and the fact that this language controls actual hardware makes it very dangerous!! Well, Ok, just about as dangerous as pen-wielding, tone-generating, light-blinking robot can get.