The educational programming language logo: Its nature and its use in Australia

Abstract

Although Logo was expressly designed as a Mathematical language for use in Education its early versions were very logic-orientated. With the addition of Seymour Papert’s ‘turtle’ the system became far more accessible to students and teachers. This paper explores some of the educational ideas behind its development and describes its first use in schools in Australia through reminiscences by two of the co-authors, Sandra Wills and Anne McDougall. The paper concludes with a reflection that educational research has not been able to prove the educational benefits of a ground-breaking approach that empowered students with computers. However, many rich case studies of successful implementation by passionate teachers abound in the literature to provide inspiration to teachers working with the new digital natives.