Review: Terrapin Logo & Roamer Program for Elementary Students

There are many aspects to Logo including the language as in what can you now do in Logo and what commands you can master.

I learned how to make a cartoon and different animal characters by using commands for movement (i.e. "towalk" or "tobounce"). I feel like I have mastered the commands for making the turtle walk around in different patterns and shapes. I also feel I have mastered the command for making the Moose actually look like he is walking by practicing with one of my 3rd graders, Keena, and preparing for the exams. Logo isn't as hard as I thought it would be once I gave it a chance. I learned that it's usually not Logo's fault if a command doesn't work.

The philosophy of Logo coincides with Papert's book, "Children's Machine." Logo allows educators to pass on lessons on students in a way that they are interested in learning. Many kids learn when they are interested in what they are learning and have freedom of options on how to learn a particular lesson.

Roamer can be used to illustrate Fd/Bk, Lt, Rt, and programming in Terrapin. I had Keena pretend that the Turtle was Roamer and instead of programming a "robot," she was writing a program via the computer. I enjoyed Roamer better because it was hands-on and 3-dimensional. Keena and I worked more with Roamer than Logo and maybe this is the reason why we both found Roamer more interesting and easier to work with. I was able to give Keena real life "cues" when she was stuck on how to get roamer to turn a certain degree angle and it seems as though she better understood problem solving this way rather than with Logo. She was actually able to see Roamer move and bump into things, which is a more vivid and interesting display as oppose to Logo; however, when we did do Logo, Keena seemed to relate ideas she had acquired while using Roamer into writing programs for Logo.