logo kids

 

To the Adults (and Logophiles)

I began writing a an introduction to programming aimed at middle-school aged kids and decided not to make a complete

book out of it, so I'm just putting it on the web for anyone who wants it. It's about 90 pages, introducing kids to

the basic concepts of programming using UCB Logo. I decided to use UCB Logo because it runs on PCs and the

Mac, and when I had ideas for turning this into a complete book and publishing it, I thought it would have a better

chance in the educational market if it used a Logo distribution that worked on both platforms. The fact that UCB

Logo is free, and runs under Linux, are also nice bonuses.

The book assumes that UCB Logo is already installed on the computer that its reader will be using and that the

reader knows where to find the icon used to start it up. For information on installing it, see

The "Before You Get Started" section following this one is aimed at the book's audience, but you should read it as

well to help your young friend decide whether he or she is really ready for the book. Kids who've had any kind of

computer class at school and are reading chapter books on their own should be fine.

To answer a few questions some of you might have...

• Why doesn't the book cover the edit command, workspaces, and other features that many people feel are integral

to Logo? Because they're too logo kids specific. In deciding which parts of Logo to teach, I chose aspects of the

language with equivalents in other programming languages so that the reader could more easily move on to other

languages. My main goal in writing this book is to get kids interested in programming and ready to move onto

other languages, not to convince them of the beauty of Logo—they won't be in any position to judge logo kids as a

language until they've learned a few other languages, anyway.

• Why doesn't the book have the reader use Jove, the text editor that comes with UCB Logo? Because after using

it under Windows 98 and Windows 2000, I decided that the relationship between UCB Logo and Jove was too

flaky to use under Windows, even when following the installation's suggestion to create a logo.bat file that

sets the EDITOR environment variable to point to Jove and so forth. Kids shouldn't have to deal with that flakiness.

So, my installation notes show how to point Windows UCB Logo to Notepad instead.

Much as I love Emacs, if you know a young reader who will be using Logo under Linux, prepare to do a bit

more tech support.

• Why do the filenames created as part of the exercises have an extension of logo after the filename's period,

when other Logo program files that come with UCB Logo don't use extensions? For three reasons: first, because

when you tell the Windows Notepad editor to edit a file and only give a filename and not an extension (for example,

flower instead of flower logo kids.) it automatically assumes an extension of txt if you don't add a

period after the filename. When you finish editing the file and Berkeley Logo automatically tries to load it, it

won't find it, because it doesn't know about the txt extension that got added on. Being explicit with the extension

makes this easier.

Secondly, when the book's readers move on to other programming languages, they'll learn that when a filename

has a specific extension to indicate that the file holds source code in a particular language, it makes it easier to

know exactly what they can do with do with that file. Simple C, C++, Java, and Perl programs can look quite

similar, but if a given file has an extension of c, cpp, java, or pl, its purpose is much clearer.

 

 

Before You Get Started...

• Do you have UCB Logo already installed? If not, have someone help you get it by using a web browser to go

to http://www.snee.com/logo. This web page explains how you can get UCB Logo off the Internet for your computer.

• Have you ever done any typing or keyboarding on a computer? When this book tells you to type a few

words on the computer keyboard, it could be very frustrating if it takes a while to find each key. You should already

know how to type lower-case and upper-case letters, how to use the spacebar and cursor keys, and where

the Enter and Backspace keys are (or, if you're using a Macintosh, where the return and delete keys are, because

they do the same things). If you don't know, ask your teacher or librarian about programs that can teach

you to use the computer keyboard a little better before you learn programming. It's kind of like using a musical

instrument—you can't make much music until you know where the notes are!

• Have you ever used a program where you create something, save it in a file with a name you make up

yourself, and then open the file again later? (You should already know what a file is, too.) For example, perhaps

you've drawn a picture on the computer screen or you wrote a story, then saved it, and opened it up later. If

not, you may need some help when you save the Logo programs that you create and then open them up to use

again later.

• Remember, there's a glossary in the back of this book. A glossary is like a dictionary, but instead of defining

thousands of words, it just defines the new words in one book. If you see a word in this book and you aren't sure

what it means, check the glossary.

This book is kind of like one of those Lego, Erector Set or K'nex kits. The book gives you pieces of the Logo programming

language, just like those kits give you blocks or other building pieces, and it shows you how to put them

together into several different projects. After you've built those projects, you'll have a better idea of what the different

pieces can do. Then the real fun starts: it's time to make up your own creations!