So what do your children do on the computer? I’m sure that many parents would say that their kids play games or surf the Internet. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could positively stimulate their brain while keeping them engaged on the computer? I would recommend getting your child involved with the LOGO programming language. There are free versions available for download on the Internet. I find that this is a good way to teach a child geometry, Cartesian coordinates and some computer programming concepts. Hopefully it gives them a better sense that there is more to a computer than websites and video games.

When I was a wee youngster, I remember one of the first things that I saw that got me interested in programming a computer was a computer language called LOGO. Some people may recognize the most popular feature of LOGO as “turtle graphics”. It was simple enough for me to get started on it right away and was instantly hooked by all the creative possibilities. The basic features of LOGO are easy enough for any parent to navigate through with their child. In addition, you will find many great lesson plans available on the Internet.

Where to get LOGO for your computer

There are quite a few implementations of LOGO out there. For Windows based PC’s a free version of LOGO called MSWLogo is available from Softronix’s website. This implementation is quite good and will even run well on older PC’s. A newer version of the program is available as FMSLogo. If you are using another platform, be sure to check out XLogo, which runs under Sun’s JAVA runtime environment. JAVA.

Getting started with Turtle Graphics

The turtle, which is an on-screen cursor, can be given commands to draw on the screen. In the examples below, it is represented by a triangle icon. Simples English commands allow you to tell the turtle what to do. For example giving the command “FORWARD 100″ will move the turtle up 100 pixels and in the process, it will draw a line on your screen.

Simple examples

There are a lot of great resources and learning guides on the Internet for you to explore, but I’ve included some simple illustrations to show you what you can do with turtle graphics.

To draw a line, you would type,

FORWARD 100

and the resulting graphic output would look something like this:

To draw a square, you would type,

REPEAT 4 [ FORWARD 100 RIGHT 90 ]

and the resulting graphic output would look something like this:

To draw a circle, you would type,

REPEAT 180 [ FORWARD 2 RIGHT 2 ]

and the resulting graphic output would look something like this:

Making computer art with LOGO

I think one of the more compelling things you can do with LOGO is create computer art. The language is very powerful, but simple enough to get started with it right away. Below I’ve included a screen shot of MSWLogo with a multi-colored spiral graphics. The graphic below is primarily created with one simple shape, a circle. Experiment with different shapes, colors and sizes and see what you can come up with. Click the image for a full-size version.

The code for the above example is as follows:

PU SETSC [0 0 0] HOME HT CS PD SETPENSIZE [1 1]

; ** ORANGE DOTTED LINES **

MAKE “T 500 MAKE “I 0
WHILE [:I<101] [SETTURTLE :I PU HT SETX -500 SETY :T SETH 90 PD MAKE "T :T-10 MAKE "I :I+1]
SETPC [253 139 3]
MAKE “I 0 MAKE “T 0
WHILE [:I<201] [WHILE [:T<101] [SETTURTLE :T PD FD 3 PU FD 2 MAKE "T :T+1] MAKE “T 0 MAKE “I :I+1]

; ** FIVE MULTICOLORED SPIRAL CIRCLES **

SETTURTLE 0 PU SETPOS [-200 100] PD HT
SETTURTLE 1 PU SETPOS [0 0] PD HT
SETTURTLE 2 PU SETPOS [200 -100] PD HT
SETTURTLE 3 PU SETPOS [-200 -100] PD HT
SETTURTLE 4 PU SETPOS [200 100] PD HT
REPEAT 36 [ REPEAT 180

[SETTURTLE 0 SETPC [4 75 252] FD 3 RT 2
SETTURTLE 1 SETPC [149 247 246] FD 3 RT 2
SETTURTLE 2 SETPC [193 3 240] FD 3 RT 2
SETTURTLE 3 SETPC [50 174 68] FD 3 RT 2
SETTURTLE 4 SETPC [199 217 0] FD 3 RT 2]

SETTURTLE 0 RT 10
SETTURTLE 1 RT 10
SETTURTLE 2 RT 10
SETTURTLE 3 RT 10
SETTURTLE 4 RT 10]

I hope you enjoyed this simple introduction to the world of LOGO. This computer language has been around for quite some time and is still a great tool for teaching and exploring your own creativity. Have fun exploring.

Tags: educational software, LOGO, programming language, turtle graphics

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm and is filed under News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.