Logo - Programming Language
/[years 1 to 12]
What is it? "Logo is the name for a philosophy of education and a continually evolving family of programming languages that aid in its realization." Harold Abelson
Logo has a long history. It originated in the 1960s from the ideas of Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, and the subsequent work of Seymour Papert, a mathematician. Logo projects have involved mathematics, language, music, robotics, telecommunications, and science. Logo is designed to be easy to learn, but to be powerful and flexible enough to handle almost any computer-based task; it is accessible to novices, including young children, and also supports complex explorations and sophisticated projects by experienced users.
The most popular Logo environments involved a robotic "turtle" (hence "turtle graphics") that sat on the floor and could be directed to move around by typing commands at the computer but more recently computer graphics screens have been used to draw shapes, designs, and pictures. There have been many incarnations of Logo and they are still being developed. One is Scratch (see above) and another is Microworlds (link below). The software is often free, but kits for Logo-directed robots of many kinds can be purchased relatively cheaply.
What do you need? It depends what you want to achieve - check out the links below
Where do you get it from? see links below
What does it cost? $0.00+
Who is using it? Widely used throughout the world
More information: For background, try Mindstorms
Links:
