Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!quiroz From: quiroz@cs.rochester.edu (Cesar Quiroz) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Logo for college-level computer literacy courses Message-ID: <1990Jul31.195854.4630@cs.rochester.edu> Date: 31 Jul 90 19:58:54 GMT Reply-To: Cesar A. Quiroz Organization: U of Rochester, Dept. of Computer Science, Rochester, NY 14627 Lines: 32 We are sort of considering running a computer literacy class with something like Logo instead of Pascal. I would appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with this idea. The class is very time-constrained, and most of the students don't expect to do much programming later. The usual approach via Pascal lets us enforce that low expectation :-) The little time available gets spent into mis-learning a subset of the syntax. The ideas get lost. No time for procedural abstraction, recursion, nor anything fun. By the time the students have understood their editor and the semantics of readln, the term is over. They don't get beyond where to put the semicolons, and all the tedium of declarations. The students didn't expect to do much programming before they took the class; after the class, they *know* they don't *want* to do any programming. A pity. So, rather than torturing them (and ourselves), we would like to use Logo (or a Scheme with good graphics) to introduce programming as symbolic manipulation. There are a few problems that perhaps the Net could help us with: (1) are there any good implementations of Logo for IBM PCs? how about textbooks? (2) how do we deal with the perception that Logo is only for 6-year olds? (is it?) (3) assuming that some students really get turned on to programming, where do we go from Logo? Thanks! -- Cesar Augusto Quiroz Gonzalez Department of Computer Science University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627