Computers: Teaching the Turtle New Tricks

Schoolchildren find the Logo language a good way to start

At the progressive Lamplighter School in Dallas, the students are hard at work at their computer consoles, their faces intent in the reflected greenish light of the video screens. An eight-year-old types instructions that bring forth on the screen a figure of the space shuttle Columbia, complete with desert landing strip and disposable booster rockets. A nine-year-old pointedly picks apart the logic of one of his teacher's programs. Three-year-olds who cannot yet speak in complete sentences bang away at their keyboards, conjuring up...

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