Re: Fw: Re: [seul-edu] language advocacy

[Tom Hoffman <tom_hoffman@mac.com>]

On Tuesday 12 June 2001 13:47, you wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 10:01:37AM +0800, Thomas Tempé wrote:
> > > I have learned Logo and Basic at about the same time (from the 7th
> > > grade on), and Logo was such a bore to me... You can't do nothing with
> > > it, except moving turtles!
> >
> > No... That's just because that's all you _learned_.

I actually did a research paper on the "rise and fall" of Logo.  Educators 
were confused by a preponderance of cheap turtle graphics-only ripoffs that 
had none of the sophisication of the full LISP-derived language.  Also, 
Papert overplayed the extent to which students would learn through 
spontaneous, unguided exploration.  Coaching, modeling, scaffolding, etc. is 
needed in student-centered exploration.

I would really like to be able to experiment with Star-Logo,  
(http://www.media.mit.edu/starlogo/) a derivative developed at MIT and Tufts. 
 It uses multiple turtles and celluar automata to model complex systems.  The 
beauty of it is that there are so many applications to the content areas, 
biology, mathematics, physics, even social science for things like market 
simulations.  It is free as in beer and runs in java.  There is also an older 
Mac-only version.

Check out the Alice Project (http://www.alice.org) for the student 
programming environment of the future--almost, but not quite fully baked.
-- 
Tom Hoffman
hoffman@as220.org
http://www.as220.org/~hoffman
~oOo~
Resignation occurs psychologically as follows: frustrated in essential 
action, they nevertheless cannot quit in anger, because the task is 
necessary; so the anger turns inward and is felt as resignation.
--Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd