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 This implementation is quite good and will even run well on older PC’s. A newer version of the program is available as FMSLogo.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.
Tags: educational software, LOGO, programming language, turtle graphics
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