Logo

• emerged in the mid-1960s
• name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization.
• Its learning environments articulate the principle that giving people personal control over powerful computational resources can enable them to establish intimate contact with profound ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.
• Its computer languages are designed to transform computers into flexible tools to aid in learning, in playing, and in exploring. (Abelson, 1982, p. ix)

Logo was particularly distinguished from other programming languages by its use of turtle geometry. Users, as young as preschoolers, successfully learned to communicate with an object called a “turtle,” commanding it to move around the screen or on the floor using commands such as FORWARD, BACK, LEFT, and RIGHT. As the turtle moved, it could leave a trail, thus combining the user’s control of the computer with geometry and aesthetics. Logo was deliberately designed to map onto a child’s own bodily movements in space. By encouraging children to “play turtle,” thousands of children learned to control the turtle successfully in this way.