The Logo Exchange newsletter/magazine/journal was started by Tom Lough and published from 1982 through 1999, making it one of the longest running educational technology publications. Here is an index to all of the articles found in Logo Exchange and The International Logo Exchange. All issues may be found here.

Chronological Index of Logo Exchange Publications

Volume 1 (1982–1983)

September 1982 (Vol. 1, No. 1)

Mindstorms – Don’t Miss It – Uncredited
If there is to be a classic book about Logo, it is sure to be Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. It provides concrete ideas and specific philosophical concepts upon which you can easily base your Logo plans, activities, and curricula.
LOGO Reinforces Geometric TABS Skills – Linda Nix
The author wanted to use a computer as much as possible as an extension of regular teaching strategies to reinforce required TABS skills. Students found Logo to be an exciting and effective way to develop recognition of geometric shapes.
WELCOME! – Tom Lough
Welcome to The National Logo Exchange, a monthly newsletter for Logo teachers and parents. We hope that you will be able to make use of the tips and techniques which are presented to you here.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Distance and Direction – Steve Tipps
The first four primitive commands introduced to the new Logo programmer are forward, back, right, and left. These four commands are codes for the first two concepts embedded in the turtle’s microworld: distance and direction.
MICROWORLDS: Design of a Language – Glen Bull
Logo is better suited to educational use than Basic because of the structure of the language, rather than because there are fewer commands to learn. Logo is more than turtle graphics and includes powerful operators for manipulation of language.
Tell Congress: We Want Computers! – Uncredited
Those of you who are participating in the computer revolution will have a particularly important reason for making your presence known. There are two actions in Congress which need your support: The Technology Education Act of 1982 and The Family Opportunity Act.
LOGO Your Boat – Tom Lough
For those of you involved with physics, here are a few things about Logo to think about when dealing with a particular class of vector problems. The Logo listing in this article is presented to you for exploration.
SPIN – Tom Lough
Here’s a procedure to set the turtle to a random heading no matter where it is located. This could be used in many introductory exercises as suggested in the Tipps For Teachers column of this issue.

October 1982 (Vol. 1, No. 2)

Turtle Geometry: Don’t Wait for the Movie – Tom Lough
There are those who regard turtle graphics as little more than kid stuff with appeal limited only to elementary school children. People in the above category simply have not yet had the opportunity to read Turtle Geometry, a textbook by Harold Abelson and Andrea diSessa.
A Parent Looks at LOGO – Sandy Towberman
Having observed her nine-year-old working with the Logo turtle, the author is convinced that Logo is a way to create something close to the ideal learning situation. Parents should be consulted and informed about innovative educational ideas like Logo.
Walls, Fences, and Camps – Tom Lough
We see walls of every fashion built everywhere we look, including professional walls. When an educator becomes entrenched in a sort of comfort zone and refuses to consider alternatives, often walls are built to block change.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Patterns and Repetition – Steve Tipps
The Logo command Repeat marks an important transition from control of the turtle on the screen to programming. Understanding Repeat and using Repeat demands recognition of patterns and how useful those patterns can be in describing the world.
MICROWORLDS: The Meaning of Meaning – Glen Bull
Throughout formal academic training it is frequently necessary to master information which has a deferred application. There is almost always a presumption that the subject learned will be of value at some time.
Fractal Fun with LOGO – Tom Lough
Fractals are an interesting class of geometric objects that can be studied and manipulated by first graders. The best thing about fractals is that Logo can be used to draw them easily.

November 1982 (Vol. 1, No. 3)

Molly Watt Writes for Teachers – Tom Lough
The October issue of Creative Computing magazine contains an article well worth reading. What Is Logo? by Molly Watt presents the point of view of a teacher who has used Logo in many different situations.
Hawaiian Students Love Logo Overlays – Elaine Blitman
Acetate transparencies can be used to create Logo overlays which have many applications. Elaine Blitman, a supervisor for Punahou School in Honolulu, and her teachers are exploring the many possibilities offered by this idea.
Hold Your Horses – Tom Lough
A colleague asked recently about the hardest thing when teaching Logo and noted it is not to intervene. The experience is common to many teachers who feel an overwhelming urge to rush in with solutions.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Patterns and Repetition II – Steve Tipps
The previous column on patterns and repetition suggested many ways teachers can encourage students to find patterns in the environment. The Repeat command serves as the way Logo allows programmers to draw patterns and consolidate understanding.
MICROWORLDS: Is LOGO a tool? – Glen Bull
Logo was intended to be a language with a low threshold and a high ceiling. This wide range brings up the question of whether Logo can be used as a tool in the context of adult goals in the work-day world.
LOGO on Wheels – Tom Lough
The power of Logo to help in the investigation of phenomena present in the physical world was made evident recently. Observing a bicycle wheel in slow motion inspired a Logo representation of its movement.

December 1982 (Vol. 1, No. 4)

Abelson’s LOGO Books Are Winners! – Tom Lough
If you have been looking for a useful Logo book to help you get a handle on what Logo can do, be sure to get Harold Abelson’s Apple Logo or Logo for the Apple II. It is more than just a reference book and explains Logo’s workings clearly.
Brookline Students Hunt LOGO Bugs – Jay Sugarman
When first hearing the word Logo, the author thought it had to do with alligator clothing emblems. The most beneficial and exciting feature about Logo is its emphasis on the problem-solving process.
Christmas and ABC’s – Tom Lough
One of the things the author always wanted to do was to teach the turtle to draw all 26 letters of the alphabet in any size or position. The task is now complete and offers incredible potential for spelling and composition.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Getting Started – Steve Tipps
All of the good educational ideas in the world are worthless unless they are tested in real situations by real teachers and children. Getting started with Logo involves time, money, and energy considerations.
MICROWORLDS: Languages for Implementing Solutions and Languages for Finding Solutions – Glen Bull
A programmer from another planet might be surprised to find Visi-Calc was conceived by a novice. Professional programmers need languages enforcing rigor, whereas casual users benefit from interactive electronic scratch pads.
LOGO Quilting Party – Tom Lough
Have you ever made a Logo quilt? You and your children can too by taking advantage of Logo’s ability to piece things together easily. This activity gives students a better understanding of how complex programs are generated.

January 1983 (Vol. 1, No. 5)

YPLA Releases Turtle’s Sourcebook – Tom Lough
To say that The Turtle’s Sourcebook is a practical guide to Logo in the classroom is to understate the case. Authors Jim Muller, Donna Bearden, and Kathleen Martin have put together an excellent guide.
Turtle Folders Help Third Graders – Bonnie Rifkin
Third graders certainly can be Logo lovers, and the author shares successful techniques and problem areas. Each student has a personalized turtle folder to track completed skills and daily notes.
What A Time! – Tom Lough
The author just returned from the MECC ’82 conference in Minneapolis and found it uplifting. Logo caused quite a stir with every workshop and presentation filled to capacity.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: From Turtling to Programming – Steve Tipps
In the first phases of working with Logo, learners control turtle movements and discover the turtle world. Helping children move from turtling to programming is a crucial issue for educators.
MICROWORLDS: How to Use LOGO – Glen Bull
Logo is most commonly thought of as a tool for learning, but it also lends itself to development of short utilities. This column explores how Logo can validate scientific inquiry and foster personal verification.
Can the Turtle Draw a Sine Wave? – Tom Lough
It is fun to give presentations on Logo to teachers and interested people. Occasionally someone asks if the turtle can draw a sine wave, inspiring an exploration of mathematical curves.

February 1983 (Vol. 1, No. 6)

Where Does Logo Fit In? – Bonnie Rifkin
School systems began programs for gifted students, often isolating them in resource rooms. As computers make their way into schools, we must ensure Logo experiences are brought back to regular classrooms.
LOGO and the Single Computer: How to Cope – Linda Nix
There has been much excitement working with Logo on the TI 99/4 computer. The major problem became how to provide hands-on time for everyone with only one computer available.
RIGHT 15! – Tom Lough
From the spirit of reader letters, the NLX has met many needs thus far. However, it may be time to consider a small change in direction toward text and list processing.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: The Other Side of Logo – Steve Tipps
Turtle graphics form the basis of learning programming through Logo, but list processing is the other powerful side. Children can begin working with text messages, printing, and screen editing.
MICROWORLDS: Introducing the Text Screens – Glen Bull
When first beginning Logo, children use the text screen only as a transition to turtle graphics. However, Logo also has great potential for language arts activities.
NLX Pen Pals Wanted! – Tom Lough
The newsletter announces a pen pal program to connect Logo classrooms across different regions. Students can exchange ideas, procedures, and projects.
PENDOWN – Sandy Towberman
Presents a creative writing activity using Tommie Turtle cartoons and humorous captions.

March 1983 (Vol. 1, No. 7)

Burnett’s Logo Book is for Do-ers – Tom Lough
Logo: An Introduction by J. Dale Burnett is a special kind of primer guiding teachers using Logo. It explores pedagogy, symmetry, and open-ended student exercises.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SPRITE GRAPHICS – Jim Fry
You can make sprites come alive using a hardware board and sprite procedures available from Terrapin. The article outlines how to configure color graphics and define custom shapes.
Get Ready! – Tom Lough
Growth often occurs in leaps and bounds rather than a steady process. The publishing landscape for Logo books and commercial software points toward rapid expansion.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Random Thoughts – Steve Tipps
Introducing Print at an early stage helps overcome the misconception that Logo is only turtle graphics. The Random command introduces probability and student-created math drills.
Creating a Logo Environment (Part 1) – Tim Riordon
A reprinted guide exploring what a Logo environment looks like, its attributes, and how teachers manage student exploration.
Logo in the News – Tom Lough
Reports on new hardware, software versions like DR Logo, price cuts, and regional workshops.

April 1983 (Vol. 1, No. 8)

Tellalate Your NLX ABC’s – Jim Fry
Describes using NLX alphabet drawing procedures in a high school lab to create tessellations and patterns.
Ed Emberley and the Turtle – Sharon Burrowes (assisted by David Burrowes)
Explores combining predefined drawing book shapes and vocabulary to build challenging Logo animal graphics.
The Turtle Elite – Tom Lough
Warns against guarding computer literacy like a medieval church and urges open sharing of Logo knowledge.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Variables: More Than One Way to Tame a Turtle – Steve Tipps
Examines how variable inputs reduce drudgery and serve as a stepping stone to algebraic thinking.
MICROWORLDS: Teaching Grammar to a Computer – Glen Bull
Demonstrates using Logo pluralization rules to verify hypotheses and encourage linguistic discovery.
Creating a Logo Environment Part II – Tim Riordon
Discusses student-led conferences, peer support, and the absence of traditional evaluation in Logo classrooms.

May 1983 (Vol. 1, No. 9)

Children and the Turtle Down on the Farm – Linda Razzano
Details kindergarten and first-grade use of a floor Tasman turtle navigating a classroom farm environment.
Cherokee Indian Symbols Come Alive With LOGO Sprites – Pat Reilly
Explores second graders using TI Logo sprites to design and animate traditional Cherokee symbols.
Back 9 – Tom Lough
Reflects on the first nine months of publication and invites reader feedback and article contributions.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: LOGO for All – Steve Tipps
Reviews student projects involving balancing scales, piggy banks, fractions, and teacher utilities.
MICROWORLDS: Teaching Grammar to a Computer II – Glen Bull
Extends pluralization rules and explores article selection routines using list operations.
Teach Your Turtle to Draw Hex Signs – Elizabeth Pearce
Presents a university student project developing a unit on Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs with variables.
Save Your Apple LOGO Graphics – Tom Lough
Provides an Applesoft BASIC routine to save LCSI Apple Logo graphics files to disk.

Volume 2 (1983–1984)

September 1983 (Vol. 2, No. 1)

Here Comes Atari Logo – Shoneen Gervich
Details the features of Atari Logo, including four turtles, color palettes, shape animation, and collision detection.
From The Editor – Tom Lough
Welcomes readers back for a new school year of growth and announces the birth of his son.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Borders and Frames – Steve Tipps
Explores drawing decorative picture frames and repeating border patterns using subprocedures and repeat loops.
MICROWORLDS: The Utilitarian Turtle – Glen Bull
Demonstrates how teachers can write short Logo utility programs to calculate student test scores and percentages.

October 1983 (Vol. 2, No. 2)

LOGO Mess Ups: Process vs. Product – Nancy Sopp
Shares how showing learning-disabled students her own teaching mistakes helped them embrace the learning process.
From The Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on the importance of teachers sharing their messy learning moments rather than appearing infallible.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: The Truth about Numbers – Steve Tipps
Explores arithmetic operators, order of precedence, equality testing, and inequalities in Logo.
MICROWORLDS: And/Or List – Glen Bull
Refines list-input error handling and input validation procedures for user-entered numbers.
Slow Turtle Moves Clearly – Tom Lough
Introduces single-step movement procedures to help students clearly observe distance and turns.
From Four Bugs to a Society of Turtles – Michael Burke
Analyzes the multi-turtle pursuit problem and how object-oriented commands simplify complex simulations.

Volume 3 (1984–1985)

April 1985 (Vol. 3, No. 8)

The Pause That Debugs – Harold Nelson
Explores using PAUSE as a dynamic, interactive debugging tool to inspect variables and edit code on the fly.
From the Editor: Logo and Sex – Tom Lough
Discusses gender equity in the classroom and avoiding biased interactions with male and female students.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Survey Sense II – Steve Tipps
Uses data collection lists to write procedures finding extremes, frequency counts, bar charts, and averages.
NLXionary: A Lectionary and Discussion of Logo Readings – Griff Wigley
Reviews Tetenbaum and Mulkeen’s article calling for a moratorium on promoting Logo as general problem-solving.
Turtle Tips – Donna Lanyi and Jane Toth
Suggests scheduling weekly sharing times for students to showcase projects and give positive feedback.
Listful Thinking: Word Machines – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Introduces word-building machines using separators, joiners, emitters, and testers.

May 1985 (Vol. 3, No. 9)

Too Many Questions, Not Enough Me – Leslie Thyberg
Introduces the “Ask three before me” rule to promote peer coaching and student independence.
From the Editor: See More, Say More – Tom Lough
Encourages teachers to embrace lifelong learning and continuous exploration with Logo.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Survey Sense III – Steve Tipps
Extends survey data analysis by writing Logo procedures to calculate standard deviations.
ExperLogo: Bunny Power for the Macintosh – Steve Tipps
Reviews ExperTelligence’s compiled Macintosh version featuring 3D graphics and a triangular bunny.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Summarizes research papers and articles evaluating Logo’s impact on readiness and writing.
Turtle Tips – Donna Lanyi and Jane Toth
Recommends wrapping up the school year with a computer fair and celebration of student work.
Listful Thinking: Suffix Busters – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Builds omitters and suffix detectors to strip or analyze word endings in language exercises.
Tail of a Turtle: The Valiant Effort – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Evaluates the wireless infrared Valiant floor turtle as a practical classroom tool.

Volume 4 (1985–1986)

September 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1)

Twenty Powerful Ideas – Molly Watt
Outlines twenty core concepts embedded in Logo to help teachers build a rich learning culture.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Welcomes readers back to school and highlights international interest from the Logo 85 conference.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Dashing – Steve Tipps
Explores dashed lines, modular dash procedures, and point-in-space concepts.
Logo Teacher Feature: Robs Muir – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles teacher Robs Muir, creator of the NLXual Challenges and telecommunications networks.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Discusses Seymour Papert’s symposium stance that non-planners and “messing about” benefit science learning.
Logo Disserts: Dissertations Dealing with Logo – Barbara Elias
Highlights a thesis on the design of a Logo unit for Portuguese student teachers.
Blending Logo and Language Arts (Listful Thinking) – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Uses syllable and consonant generators to explore phonetic rules and English blends.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Suggests back-to-school review activities like turtle treasure hunts and dragon drawing starters.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews supplemental workbooks and advanced teacher texts like Beyond Mindstorms.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Answers reader questions on memory management and the node-based storage of lists.
Logo in the United States: A Survey – Joyce Tobias
Summarizes statistical findings on hardware usage, grade levels, and subjects where Logo is applied.
NLXual Challenges: Bug Hunting – E. Paul Goldenberg
Presents a subtle letter-tallying bug hunt to test debugging skills.

October 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2)

Multiple Turtles Without Sprites – James Hurley
Demonstrates how to simulate multiple turtles in single-turtle Logo versions for physics modeling.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on the importance of meaningful naming in Logo and human development.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Rooms for Logo – Steve Tipps
Connects physical room mapping and spatial modeling to coordinate-based Logo maps.
Logo Teacher Feature: Leslie Thyberg – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles Leslie Thyberg and her work with K-3 adaptive learning environments and PCjr computers.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Reviews Uri Leron’s paper on quasi-Piagetian learning and structuring guided discovery.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a thesis classifying the bugs and debugging strategies of sixth-grade students.
Listful Thinking: Logo Word Chemistry – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Establishes a language laboratory using sound categories to test phonetic combinations.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Focuses on keyboard familiarity games, floor keyboards, and typing skill builders.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews elementary workbooks and introductory guides for older students and parents.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Explains why arrays are rare in Logo and how linked lists handle dynamic data structures.
NLXual Challenges: The BASIC Challenge – Robs Muir
Challenges readers to write a complete BASIC interpreter in Logo to demonstrate its power.

December 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 4)

Come to the LogoShow! – Doris Schroeder
Details a spectacular multi-station fair where fourth graders presented fairy-tale storyboards.
Out of Space (A Logo adaptation of Hall and Oates’ “Out of Touch”) – Margo Hirsch
A student-written song lyrics poem about running out of workspace nodes.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Discusses the perception that Logo is only for primary grades and the need for high school adoption.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Geologoboards – Steve Tipps
Explores coordinate geometry and grid plotting using positional zip procedures.
Logo Teacher Feature: Peter Rawitsch – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles first-grade teacher Peter Rawitsch and his “Four Laws of Logo”.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Reviews video segments from KET and Stanley Pogrow’s futuristic perspective on computers.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a thesis comparing the problem-solving and debugging strategies of gifted vs. normal children.
Listful Thinking: Instant Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Introduces single-key DO commands and customized instant tools for young children.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Suggests integrating geography maps, clown faces, and holiday procedures into core subjects.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – James Fry
Reviews Atari-specific guidebooks and structured programming primers.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Explains input buffer limits and provides list-building procedures for large data sets.
NLXual Challenges: Making List Operators – Robs Muir
Challenges readers to build equivalents of LAST, LPUT, and SENTENCE using primitive building blocks.

January 1986 (Vol. 4, No. 5)

Sometimes Logo Teachers Should Teach – Marge Stouffer
Advocates for direct instruction of editor keystrokes to prevent student frustration.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Explores why he never tires of Logo because he “never reaches closure on the message”.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Overland Mapmaking Adventures – Steve Tipps
Extends spatial understanding to state maps, coordinates, and network road systems.
Logo Teacher Feature: Judith Harris – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles Judith Harris and her interdisciplinary projects in music, hieroglyphics, and astronomy.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Reviews an Omni magazine interview with Seymour Papert on soft math and thinking styles.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights Richard Noss’s doctoral study on creating a mathematical environment through programming.
Listful Thinking: Anatomy of a Procedure – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Dissects the list structure of procedures to build step-by-step execution tools.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Discusses pre-computer pattern bead activities leading into the REPEAT command.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – Regina M. Bowden
Reviews Logoworlds and its modular guided discovery approach.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Explains memory nodes, garbage collection, and node allocation limits in Logo.
It’s Only Words (NLXual Challenges) – Robs Muir
Challenges students to write programs generating English-like five-letter words.

February 1986 (Vol. 4, No. 6)

Logo Teaching: A Marriage of Theory and Practice – Ceil Humphreys
Shows how learning theory (like Ausubel’s advance organizers) improved teacher training applications.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Dedicated to the memory of Christa McAuliffe and fellow Challenger space shuttle travelers.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Getting to Know You – Steve Tipps
Uses READLIST and variable boxes to simulate conversational interviews and data collection.
Logo Teacher Feature: Peter Anderson – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles an English teacher’s sabbatical tour of international computer policies and classrooms.
NLXionary: A Lectionary of Selected Logo Readings – Griff Wigley
Examines Seymour Papert’s paper on criticising technocentrism and educational choices.
Listful Thinking: Story Time – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Combines random word selection with grammar lessons to build story-starter templates.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Provides step-by-step strategies for conquering “arcphobia” and drawing circles.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – James Fry
Reviews Molly and Dan Watt’s Teaching with Logo building blocks.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights Sandra Hines’ study on five-year-olds learning to program with Logo.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Explains the difference between compiled and interpreted languages.
NLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Challenges readers to solve geometric and trigonometric problems without using pi.

March 1986 (Vol. 4, No. 7)

Euler and the Turtle – Judi Harris
Combines Leonhard Euler’s topology puzzles with turtle line drawing challenges.
From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reminds educators to encourage student risk-taking in learning environments.
TIPPS for TEACHERS: Circular Quirks – Steve Tipps
Investigates circle components, good mistakes, and wave/loop-de-loop drawing projects.
Logo Teacher Feature: Mark Mariotti – Mark Mariotti / Rebecca Poplin
Profiles a computer specialist using tiling, nursery rhymes, and space units.
NLXionary – Griff Wigley
Reviews Seymour Papert’s Logo 85 paper on computer criticism versus technocentric thinking.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights Nicole Michaud’s thesis on Logo as a didactic means of re-education.
Listful Thinking: Summing Up – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Uses dice simulations, averages, and class polls to explore statistical sampling errors.
Turtle Tips – Jane Toth and Donna Lanyi
Explores editing practice packets and BINGO games to reinforce control keystrokes.
Teacher to Teacher: A Review of New Logo Materials – James Fry
Reviews John Glantz’s Logo Lessons and Patrick Thompson’s Seven Microworlds.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Compares Logo and Lisp structures, explaining why beginners start with Logo.
NLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Challenges readers to build a general-purpose plotting program for mathematical functions.

Volume 5 (1986–1987)

September 1986 (Vol. 5, No. 1)

Now, More Than Ever, FD 100! – Tom Lough
The editor welcomes readers back for the fifth volume of publication and announces the combination of the National Logo Exchange and International Logo Exchange into a single magazine. He details new interactive features including a readers’ forum, student penpal network, and captionless cartoons.
Starting Logo with Young Children? Slow Down the Turtle! – Dan Watt and Molly Watt
Explores how standard Logo screen turtles can confuse young children due to high-speed leaps and large numerical inputs. The authors propose startup procedures and refined scripts that slow down the turtle and use smaller steps to preserve intentionality.
Guess Who Is Coming to Inservice! – Steve Tipps
Reviews a videotape series featuring Seymour Papert discussing learning, emotion, discovery, and programming hurdles. The column examines how these tapes can help schools foster a shared culture of Logo-based thinking.
Logo Teacher Feature: Marian Rosen – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles Marian Rosen, a sixth-grade teacher using LogoWriter to create animated science reports and interactive riddle games. It highlights her district’s out-of-school programs and dedication to preventing student failure.
Teaching Tools: Chart Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Introduces foundational drawing tools like LINE and OVER to construct custom charts and number lines. The authors demonstrate how these simple procedures help students explore mathematical inequalities graphically.
TO BEGIN :SETUP – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Offers foundational classroom management tips, ergonomic setup advice, and student assistance strategies for teachers starting Logo. It also provides a hands-on paper master for constructing a “Turtle Twirler” angle finder.
Logo LinX: Logo Music: A Numerical Denomination – Judi Harris
Connects musical notation and fractional note durations to Logo PLAY commands and pattern block fractions. The author illustrates how composing melodies illuminates rational number equivalencies and operations.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Introduces the new mathematics column dedicated to exploring Logo in the context of arithmetic, algebra, and intuition. The editor invites contributions of activities, games, and microworlds that go beyond turtle geometry.
SpecialTalk: Do You Know a Special Educator? – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Launches a dedicated column on Logo and special populations, inviting educators and therapists to exchange ideas. The authors discuss a two-switch voice-synthesized project designed to help physically impaired children communicate.
LXionary: Logo on CompuServe and BIX – Griff Wigley
Explores electronic neighborhoods and computer conferencing systems like CompuServe and BIX. The author compares the folksy atmosphere of CompuServe’s Logo Forum with the technical discussions found on BIX.
Testudinal Testimony: Early Studies on Logo and Mathematics – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews early research investigating the impact of Logo programming on children’s mathematical thinking and concept acquisition. The column examines conflicting findings and highlights the critical importance of teacher guidance and classroom context.
Logo Disserts: The Effect of MECC and Papert Teaching Styles on the Level of Logo Learning and the Conceptual Tempo of Fourth Grade Students – Barbara Elias
Highlights a doctoral dissertation comparing structured MECC curriculum modules with open-ended Papert-style environments. The study evaluates student syntax gains, conceptual tempo, and cooperative socialization patterns.
LogoWriter: A Review – Sharon Burrowes
Provides an in-depth review of LogoWriter, evaluating its site-licensing model, page metaphor, and word processing integration. The reviewer highlights its strengths in eliminating editor friction while noting hardware and workspace limitations.
Teacher to Teacher: Learning Math with Logo – James Fry
Reviews Rudy Neufeld’s mathematics curriculum manual and teacher resource guide for grades four through seven. The review emphasizes its field-tested lessons and comprehensive guidance for classroom teachers.
Logo Institute Puts Excitement into Summer! – Barbara Hyink, Gary Stager, and Charlotte White
Recounts a two-week summer institute at Keene State College led by Dan and Molly Watt and Tony Stavely. Participants engaged in collaborative programming, project development, and community building.
Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Presents a captionless cartoon featuring two cartoon turtles commenting on Logo, inviting reader-submitted humor.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Advises a teacher working in a school where colleagues and supervisors are resistant to using Logo. The column offers practical and philosophical strategies for introducing Logo through standard curriculum applications.
IntLXual Challenges: Rewriting LogoWriter (The Process) – Robs Muir
Explores the tension between process and content in education and challenges readers to write a Logo TOWARDS function. The puzzle requires building an arctangent procedure and exploring isopsephic verses.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Introduces the combined international section reporting on computer education developments across the globe. The editor shares observations from the Innotech Conference in Manila and discusses hurdles in developing nations.
Africa & Middle East: Arabic Logo and African Projects – Fatimata Seye Sylla
Details the development of Arabic Logo for MSX computers by the Al Alamiah Company and reviews CAI initiatives in French-speaking African nations.
Asia: World Congress and Logo News from China – Hillel Weintraub
Reports on educational technology discussions in Vancouver and highlights Professor Lu Chuan Xing’s work with the Logo Language Research Institute in Shanghai.
Australia: Brian Harvey and Logo at COMPSCI86 – Anne McDougall
Covers Brian Harvey’s keynote presentations in Victoria advocating for Logo in senior secondary computer science courses.
Europe: Logo News from Italy – Richard Noss
Presents Maria Alberti’s report on the enthusiastic adoption of Logo in Italian schools despite centralized system hurdles.
Latin America: Logo in Colombia – Amparo Molina de Caviedes
Describes government-backed computer centers, private school implementation in Bogota, and parent workshops.
North America: Logo News from Michigan – Michael Friendly
Reports on the formation of MACUL SIGLOGO and upcoming regional workshops focusing on LogoWriter.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Invites individual students worldwide to submit penpal ads to connect and collaborate on shared projects.

October 1986 (Vol. 5, No. 2)

SETHEADING :WHITHER – Tom Lough
Editorial reflecting on the absolute reference frame of the SETHEADING command as a metaphor for educational orientation and planning. The author compares setting a steady course in teaching to establishing vector directions in physics.
LEGO and Logo: Partnership of the Future – Joyce A. Tobias
Explores the groundbreaking LEGO/Logo learning environment combining physical building blocks with computer-controlled motors and sensors. The author details pilot research at Boston’s Hennigan School and highlights how the system fosters scientific experimentation and problem-solving.
Tipps for Teachers: Funatic Fractions – Steve Tipps
Examines cognitive hurdles in learning fractions and introduces flexible Logo tool procedures for exploring number lines. The activities guide students through unit visualization, fractional parts, and decimal conversions.
Teacher Feature: America Foster – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles high school computer teacher America Foster and her daughter Jacqueline, whose award-winning conic solids project combined physical models with Logo diagrams. The column highlights community outreach and parent workshops.
Teaching Tools: Algebra Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Demonstrates how unobtrusive Logo procedures representing algebraic variables can shorten feedback loops. The authors illustrate self-modifying code and explore variable-driven house drawing projects.
TO BEGIN :FIRST.STEPS – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Discusses instructional sequencing decisions between SETHEADING and directional turns. It also provides instructions for making egg-carton turtle manipulatives and disk care guidelines.
Logo LinX: Hier and Hier: Logo and Ancient Egyptian Writing – Judi Harris
Reports on sixth graders creating a hieroglyphic typewriter using state-transparent subprocedures and recursion. The interdisciplinary project linked ancient history with modular programming and scale calculations.
MathWorlds: What Makes a Good Intervention? – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Reviews conference papers on mathematical interventions, including isometric drawing microworlds and turtle geometry cycloids. The column emphasizes multiple representations and descriptive forms of programming.
SpecialTalk: Spelling Fuzzies and Spare Parts – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Shares practical special education ideas, including using screen graphics as spelling rewards and modular truck procedures for language therapy. It also touches on international work with Down’s syndrome students and Gallaudet’s ENFI networking project.
Testudinal Testimony: Early Studies on Logo and Problem Solving – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews early research evaluating whether Logo programming enhances general problem-solving and logical reasoning skills. The author analyzes mixed empirical findings and stresses the importance of guided pedagogical context.
Logo Disserts: Using Logo to Supplement the Teaching of Geometric Concepts in the Elementary School Classroom – Barbara Elias
Highlights a doctoral study investigating the impact of Logo supplements on sixth-grade geometry achievement and spatial visualization. The findings indicate significant gains in spatial ability and positive shifts in locus of control for female students.
Teacher to Teacher: The Logo Project Book: Exploring Words and Lists – James Fry
Reviews Alison Birch’s project collection and companion diskette designed to guide users through word and list processing activities. The review praises its color-coded layout and classroom-tested explorations.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Presents a cartoon of turtle characters observing students at a computer, inviting reader-submitted caption ideas.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Clarifies the distinction between tail-recursive procedures and embedded recursive procedures. The columnist provides code examples tracing how stack frames and suspended tasks operate in memory.
IntLXual Challenges: Windows of My Mind – Robs Muir
Examines common teacher myths preventing computer adoption and explores LCSI Logo’s WINDOW command. The challenge tasks readers with building a functional WINDOW equivalent.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Introduces global correspondence focused on Latin America, Asia, and Europe. The editor continues discussing systemic hurdles in introducing educational technology to developing nations.
Europe: Logo at “LOGO” Luxembourg – Richard Noss
Presents Charles Krantz’s report on implementing network Logo environments for deaf and hearing-impaired students in Luxembourg.
Asia: Logo in Malaysia and Japan – Hillel Weintraub
Covers Tan Chik Heok and Ng Kwan Hoon’s Malay-language Logo textbook and newspaper tutorials, alongside university teacher workshops in Japan.
Latin America: Logo in Argentina and Brazil – Eduardo Cavallo & Patricia Dowling
Reports on the Pro-Logo Patagonian Meeting in remote Puerto Desado, kindergarten microworlds in Buenos Aires, and upcoming Brazilian conferences.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Provides guidelines and conversational examples for students and teachers joining the international penpal network.

November 1986 (Vol. 5, No. 3)

Whispering Hope – Tom Lough
Reflects on the emotional impact of parents and children discovering Logo together. The author suggests that steady, quiet growth in educational computing fosters meaningful family and classroom changes.
Logo Integration: Working towards the Ideal – Dave Chesebrough
Describes Sewickley Academy’s schoolwide Logo implementation across grades three through twelve. The author details the development of custom support materials, team teaching strategies, and home computer integration.
Tipps for Teachers: Fraction Line Frolics – Steve Tipps
Introduces Logo number line procedures that help students visualize and manipulate fractions. The activities cover mark divisions, equivalent fractions, decimal conversions, and addition of rational numbers.
Teacher Feature: Paola Williams – Rebecca Poplin
Profiles computer coordinator Paola Williams and her work at Honolulu’s Punahou School. The column highlights interdisciplinary math and technology units covering stock markets, grocery pricing, and home budgeting.
Teaching Tools: Geoboard Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Bridges physical geoboard investigations with coordinate-based computer graphics. The authors provide Logo tools for graphing, printing, and scaling geometric figures.
TO BEGIN :PROCEDURES – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Offers strategies for guiding students from immediate-mode turtling into structured procedure writing. It includes tips on modular naming, off-sketching, and recycling commands in LogoWriter.
Logo LinX: Paper, Process, and Polyhedra: When the Product Isn’t a Picture – Judi Harris
Explores using Logo as an architectural tool to design unfolded three-dimensional polyhedra. Students printed, cut out, and assembled complex geometric shapes to bridge 2D and 3D spatial concepts.
MathWorlds: What Makes a Good Intervention? – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Reviews conference presentations on effective pedagogical interventions in mathematics education. Topics include isometric drawing microworlds, turtle-procedure cycloids, and high-level descriptive commands.
SpecialTalk: Special Education News and Notes – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Presents updates and resources for using technology with special populations. The column discusses networking projects, accessibility centers, and conference announcements.
LXionary: Review of Logo Literature – Griff Wigley
Examines recent articles and discussions on Logo pedagogy and classroom implementation. The author reflects on the evolving dialogue within the educational computing community.
Testudinal Testimony: Research Updates – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews ongoing research evaluating the cognitive and social outcomes of computer programming environments. The column discusses methodological challenges and the interpretation of transfer effects.
Logo Disserts: Recent Dissertations – Barbara Elias
Highlights doctoral research examining the effects of computer-based learning environments on student achievement. The summaries provide valuable insights for curriculum specialists.
More About LogoWriter – Sharon Burrowes
Offers additional tips and classroom management strategies for implementing LogoWriter effectively. The article addresses common hurdles encountered by teachers transitioning from standard Logo.
Teacher to Teacher: Reviews – James Fry
Reviews new educational software and classroom resource materials designed to support Logo instruction. The evaluation focuses on usability and pedagogical soundness.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of cartoon turtles observing students, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Answers technical programming questions from readers regarding Logo syntax, recursion, and workspace management.
IntLXual Challenges: Advanced Programming Puzzles – Robs Muir
Presents complex coding challenges designed to stretch readers’ problem-solving skills in Logo. The author provides open-ended programming tasks without publishing direct solutions.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Reports on global Logo activities, conferences, and teacher training initiatives. The international editor highlights collaborative projects across different continents.
Global Comments – Dennis Harper
Reflects on international perspectives and the cultural nuances of introducing educational technology worldwide. The commentary addresses common administrative challenges.
Africa: Regional Updates – Fatimata Seye Sylla
Surveys computer education and teacher training developments across African nations. The report highlights regional workshops and collaborative goals.
Australia: Conference Reports – Anne McDougall
Covers recent Australian educational computing conferences and classroom Logo implementations. The summary highlights local presentations and speaker contributions.
North America: Regional News – Michael Friendly
Gathers updates on user group meetings, regional conferences, and software adoptions across North America.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Facilitates international student correspondence by matching classrooms and individual penpals. The column prints student requests and guidelines for joining the network.

December 1986 (Vol. 5, No. 4)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on the concept of the STARTUP variable in Logo and compares it to the challenges of beginning new teaching initiatives. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and planning when steering an educational course.
Trim a Logo Christmas Tree – Edwina Walsh
Describes a collaborative seventh-grade classroom project where students designed and positioned geometric ornaments on a virtual Christmas tree. The author highlights problem-solving lessons learned through debugging repetition and screen-clearing conflicts.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Explores the diverse metaphors used to describe Logo, including rooms, toolboxes, sandboxes, and mazes. The column examines how these mental models shape a teacher’s approach to exploratory computing.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Gwen Roberts)
Profiles Los Angeles computer coordinator Gwen Roberts and her work at The Open School integrating Logo into daily explorations. The column highlights ancient mathematics connections, including triangulation and historical sine tables.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Presents advanced geoboard tools for transforming, shifting, and flipping coordinate lists on the Logo screen. The authors demonstrate how these graphical tools connect coordinate geometry with algebraic scaling and offset.
TO BEGIN :PROJECTS – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Discusses the pedagogical benefits of a project-centered approach to introduce holiday-themed Logo activities and word processing. It also provides instructions for building five-pointed stars and playing musical selections.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Explores the collaborative team-teaching process behind developing an interdisciplinary Bible trope microworld with elementary students. The author provides an eight-step guide for creating generic educational microworlds.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Examines functional programming and variable instruction through the work of Frederick Klotz, Uri Leron, and Rina Zazkis. The column details student activities involving function machines, inverse functions, and subprocedure variables.
SpecialTalk – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Explores using Logo with touch tools, single keypress commands, and external switches or joysticks. It provides code examples for reading button presses and integrating text-to-speech synthesizers.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews research examining the impact of Logo programming on students’ self-concept, motivation, and attitudes toward mathematics. The author analyzes mixed empirical findings and highlights key teacher-controlled factors that foster self-esteem.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a master’s thesis by Sharnee Chait utilizing protocol analysis to study seventh-grade students’ problem-solving strategies and debugging behaviors in Logo. The study establishes a classification system for programming episodes and errors.
Teacher to Teacher – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews Cynthia Solomon’s book Computer Environments for Children, praising its insights into constructivist learning and discovery methods. The review contrasts drill-and-practice orientations with child-centered exploratory environments.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Examines an interview with Sherry Turkle discussing personal styles, programming instruction, and human-computer interaction. The reviewer reflects on the broader philosophical and social implications of classroom computing.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of cartoon turtles observing students, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions. The column announces winning entries from previous caption challenges.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Clarifies technical differences between MIT Logo and LCSI Logo regarding unquoted arguments for primitives like ERASE. The columnist explains how strict quoting avoids evaluation errors in workspace management.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores artificial versus natural designs in programming and challenges readers to build a maze-solving program using redefinable commands. The puzzle investigates the use of primitive clobbering and dynamic definition tools.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Fatimata Seye Sylla, Hillel Weintraub, Eduardo Cavallo, and Patricia Dowling
Surveys global Logo developments including administrative updates in Senegal, computer literacy pilot projects in India, and public workshops in Argentina. The section highlights international cooperation and grassroots enthusiasm across developing and developed nations.

January 1987 (Vol. 5, No. 5)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on the distinction between process and product through an opera experience and encourages balancing teaching efforts to avoid burnout. The author suggests adopting “good enough” as a standard of sustained professional growth.
Louisville Goes Logo – Ric Manning
Reports on a model elementary computer program at Roosevelt-Perry Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky. The article highlights a joint research study with the University of Louisville investigating Logo’s impact on cognitive skills.
Creating Patterns and REPEATing Them – Chuck Thompson
Outlines a structured sequence of lessons using concrete manipulatives and dot grids to teach children how to analyze and write REPEAT statements. The project formed the core of an elementary cognitive research study in Kentucky.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Reflects on five years of teaching with Logo, sharing hard-earned lessons on hardware reliability, social collaboration, and student intuition. The column advocates for maintaining a flexible, open approach to computational problem-solving.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Michael Charles)
Profiles sixth-grade teacher Michael Charles and his transition to student-centered teaching through Logo exploration. The column describes action research with low-achieving students in Phoenix, Arizona.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Introduces microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) tools that connect temperature and light sensors to the computer’s game port. The authors provide Logo procedures to record data, build timers, convert scales, and analyze real-world phenomena.
TO BEGIN :VARIABLES – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Provides practical, classroom-tested strategies for introducing Logo variables through concrete pre-computer activities and multi-variable procedures. The column emphasizes building conceptual bridges from fill-in-the-blank placeholders to algebraic notation.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Connects kinesthetic movements in dance and gymnastics to geometric angle estimation and Logo programming. The author illustrates how studying bodily positions helps students bridge abstract mathematical notions with physical experiences.
SpecialTalk – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Reviews Sylvia Weir’s book Cultivating Minds: A Logo Casebook, highlighting how interactive computer environments reveal children’s cognitive strategies. The column also provides technical instructions for connecting serial speech synthesizers to run SAY procedures in Logo.
Microworlds of the Month Club – Michael Friendly
Provides an update on the proposed global catalog of curriculum-based Logo microworlds and invites reader participation and feedback.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews an article by Seymour Papert in Classroom Computer Learning examining different classroom visions and productive uses of Logo. The commentator reflects on the need for concrete teaching models and guidelines for novices.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements and Michael T. Battista
Discusses the theoretical rationale behind an NSF-funded project developing a Logo-based elementary school geometry curriculum. The authors analyze current curriculum deficiencies and explain how Logo promotes higher-level van Hiele geometric thinking.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a doctoral study by Martha Hopkins evaluating a classroom model for diagnosing elementary students’ problem-solving process skills using Logo.
Welcome Back to LogoWriter – Sharon Burrowes
Offers practical classroom management tips, editing shortcuts, and multiple-turtle commands (TELL, EACH, ASK) for implementing LogoWriter. It includes a complete listing for a student-accessible screen eraser program.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of cartoon turtles observing a runaway turtle procedure, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Teacher to Teacher – James Fry
Reviews Volume 2 of Brian Harvey’s Computer Science Logo Style and a card-based curriculum set titled Logo Steps into the Curriculum.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Expands on the October discussion of tail recursion, clarifying how stack frames, suspended tasks, and loop conversions operate in memory.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores the animistic and totemic parallels of programming, challenging readers to build a Logo procedure for an American Indian turtle representation.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Fatimata Seye Sylla, and Anne McDougall
Surveys international developments including administrative reorganization in Senegal, regional teacher seminars in Togo, and a first-grade curriculum study in Australia.

February 1987 (Vol. 5, No. 6)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on the balance between striving for excellence and accepting a standard of performance that is “good enough” in teaching and personal life.
Listen, My Children, and You Shall Hear – Peter Rawitsch
Uses Paul Revere’s ride as a poetic metaphor to explain tail-end recursion and conditional stop rules in Logo, complete with original sheet music.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Explores letter frequency in words and phrases through Logo text-scanning tools, connecting computational word play to linguistic analysis and game show strategies.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Bev and Lee Cunningham)
Profiles Iowa educators Bev and Lee Cunningham and their work combining special education, gifted instruction, and science tool development in Logo.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Extends microcomputer-based laboratory tools to temperature data logging over 24-hour periods using sensors, delay timers, and algebraic conversion formulas.
TO BEGIN :CIRCLES – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Explores early circle geometry through polygon approximations, circumference measurements, and ratio explorations of pi.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Examines “syllabicalexicopology” by using Logo list-picking tools to generate and define random sniglets from prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Exores the subordination of teaching to learning, non-judgmental awareness, and internal educational energy through the principles of Timothy Gallwey and Caleb Gattegno.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements and Michael T. Battista
Discusses why Logo enhances geometry learning by externalizing intuitive expectations and fostering van Hiele levels of thought.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights Honi Joyce Bamberger’s doctoral dissertation examining the effect of Logo turtle graphics on fourth-grade problem-solving strategies.
Teacher to Teacher – James Fry
Reviews Macintosh Logo: A Self-Teaching Guide by Roger Haigh and Loren Radford.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Presents a cartoon of turtle characters observing a runaway turtle, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores artificial versus natural designs and challenges readers to build a Logo program to draw an American Indian turtle totem.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Richard Noss, and Hillel Weintraub
Reports on international Logo activities, including a comprehensive update on teacher training and software translation in Iceland, and India’s CLASS project.

March 1987 (Vol. 5, No. 7)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on goal-setting and problem-solving through the metaphor of car headlights on a night trip and developing a complex letter-permutation procedure.
Logo: Syntax and Sculpture – Louise Robinson
Profiles a graduate student who utilized Logo as an architectural design tool to model and plan complex marble slab sculptures.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Reviews essential Logo books and foundational literature, highlighting classic texts and teacher resource materials that embody the true Logo spirit.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Introduces advanced Logo plotting tools to graph numerical lists, mathematical functions like parabolas, and data generated by computer algorithms.
TO BEGIN :COORDINATES – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Presents classroom-tested activities using the hidden coordinate grid, floor grids, and mapping exercises to build spatial awareness.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Explores “rich problems” and mathematical inquiry by simulating digital time clocks and time patterns using recursive procedures.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring David A. Smith)
Explores three-dimensional affine geometry and Archimedean polygon approximations of pi using an “Affine Turtle” that can draw shadows.
SpecialTalk – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Examines the integration of optical videodisks with Logo to provide vast libraries of photographic and video stimuli for language intervention.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews research on children’s understanding of angles, turns, and angle measurement, highlighting common misconceptions and the benefits of Logo estimation tasks.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a master’s thesis by Michael T. Charles detailing a qualitative case study of teacher interventions and student thinking in a Logo environment.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews literature on decision-making models and critical thinking skills, connecting structured problem-solving steps to classroom Logo instruction.
Teacher to Teacher – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews Logo: A Learner’s Guide by George Burns and Michael Cook, evaluating its step-by-step approach for novice educators.
Welcome to LogoWriter Again – Sharon Burrowes
Focuses on the text-processing and list-handling capabilities of LogoWriter Version 1.1, providing code snippets for text evaluation and Pig Latin generation.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of cartoon turtles observing musical tone commands, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Analyzes a recursive list-summing procedure, explaining the differences between prefix and infix notation and proper list base cases.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores cognitive engagement and time-dissolution in hobbies, challenging readers to write a calendar date program that calculates the day of the week.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Fatimata Seye Sylla, and Anne McDougall
Surveys global Logo activities, featuring an index of international coverage across 13 issues, a proposal for balancing CAl and Logo in West Africa, and a report on a working conference in Victoria, Australia.

April 1987 (Vol. 5, No. 8)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Extends the editorial reflection on “good enough” by exploring how students and teachers evaluate the quality of their own work and projects.
Logo Comes to Life – Brian Silverman
Describes the creation of a cellular automata “Life” microworld in Logo and discusses how simple rules generate complex, unpredictable behaviors.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Explores probability and random events through Logo simulations of random walks, coin flips, and dice throws.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Theresa Overall)
Profiles Texas teacher Theresa Overall and her work integrating Logo into the rich, multidisciplinary environment of the Lamplighter School.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Demonstrates advanced plotting tools for microcomputer-based laboratories, graphing sensor data, mathematical functions, and scaled curves.
TO BEGIN :PROJECTS – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Shares student-created projects from Punahou School, illustrating how first graders and older students integrate Logo graphics with writing and social studies.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Explores structural spelling patterns and rules using Logo list procedures to generate and analyze phonetic word structures and sniglets.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring David A. Smith)
Illustrates the serendipitous use of Logo in a college calculus lab to compute approximations of pi using Archimedean polygons.
SpecialTalk – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Explores the use of talking word processors as an engaging, interactive alternative to traditional drill-and-practice software for special populations.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews research on general mathematics achievement and Logo, examining why standardized tests often fail to capture the spontaneous mathematical intelligence observed in classrooms.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a doctoral dissertation by Monty Fickel investigating the effects of Logo study on the cognitive and problem-solving abilities of sixth-grade students.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews an article on “brain-based instruction” and Proster Theory, connecting its core principles to the design of effective Logo learning environments.
Teacher to Teacher – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews Logo: A Learner’s Guide by George Burns and Michael Cook, evaluating its practical approach for teachers learning the fundamentals.
Welcome to LogoWriter Again – Sharon Burrowes
Focuses on LogoWriter Version 1.1 features, text processing commands, mathematical text evaluation, and traditional list-processing comparisons.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of turtle characters discussing error messages, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Analyzes a recursive list-summing procedure, correcting prefix and infix notation errors and explaining base cases.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores avocations and time-dissolution, challenging readers to write a procedure that calculates the day of the week for any given date.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Fatimata Seye Sylla, and Anne McDougall
Surveys international developments including global Logo usage statistics, Arabic MSX Logo integration in Senegal, and software design projects in Australia.

May 1987 (Vol. 5, No. 9)

From the Editor – Tom Lough
Reflects on personal observations of how Logo thinking and recursion positively influence problem-solving abilities across diverse fields like navigation, mathematics, and artificial intelligence.
Polishing Programs for Publication: A Neglected Step in the Logo Programming Process – Molly Watt and Daniel H. Watt
Draws parallels between the writing process and Logo programming, outlining a structured process model for revising, modularizing, and publishing clean code.
Tipps for Teachers – Steve Tipps
Explores probability and random events through Logo simulations of random walks, coin flips, and multi-coin combinations.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Penny Rendall)
Profiles St. Paul elementary teacher Penny Rendall and her work integrating LogoWriter into history, social studies, and a student “Turtle Tutors” program.
Teaching Tools – Glen Bull and Paula Cochran
Presents teaching strategies and lesson preparation steps for using a Logo poetry generator to teach grammar, synonyms, and poetic forms.
TO BEGIN :MORE.PROJECTS – Elaine Blitman and Barbara Jamile
Shares kindergarten and elementary student projects from Punahou School, illustrating how children combine word processing, animation, and social studies.
Logo LinX – Judi Harris
Explores vocabulary study through “sniglets” and word component analysis, using Logo list tools to generate and define invented words.
MathWorlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring Uri Leron)
Examines the fundamental mathematical nature of turtle programming, focusing on formalizing intuitions and managing change and constancy through variables.
SpecialTalk – Paula Cochran and Glen Bull
Discusses the benefits of electronic conferencing and outlines the features of the “Special Talk” network supporting special educators and clinicians.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews research on angle measurement misconceptions and the effectiveness of Logo experiences in developing spatial estimation skills.
Logo Disserts – Barbara Elias
Highlights a doctoral dissertation by Monty Fickel examining the effects of Logo study on sixth-grade cognitive and problem-solving abilities.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews literature on decision-making models and critical thinking skills, connecting structured problem-solving steps to classroom Logo instruction.
Teacher to Teacher – Anne Cairns Federlein
Reviews Logo: A Learner’s Guide by George Burns and Michael Cook, evaluating its practical approach for teachers learning the fundamentals.
Welcome to LogoWriter Again – Sharon Burrowes
Focuses on the text-processing and list-handling capabilities of LogoWriter Version 1.1, providing code snippets for text evaluation and Pig Latin generation.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of turtle characters discussing error messages, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Q and A – Jim McCauley
Analyzes a recursive list-summing procedure, correcting prefix and infix notation errors and explaining base cases.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores avocations and time-dissolution, challenging readers to write a calendar date program that calculates the day of the week.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper, Fatimata Seye Sylla, and Anne McDougall
Surveys international developments including global Logo usage statistics, Arabic MSX Logo integration in Senegal, and software design projects in Australia.

Volume 6 (1987–1988)

September 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1)

From the Editors – Sharon Burrowes and Tom Lough
Reflects on the history and growth of the National and International Logo Exchanges as the publication transitions to a new home with the International Council for Computers in Education. The editors outline upcoming opportunities for community contribution and collaboration.
SIG News and Conference Announcements – Uncredited
Announces upcoming professional development events, including the Great Lakes/East Coast Logo Conference in Cleveland and the National Educational Computing Conference in Dallas. The announcement details proposal submission guidelines and deadlines.
IF … THEN – Nancy Parks Sopp
Relates a personal journey of transitioning from rigid, teacher-directed lessons to a flexible, student-driven teaching style inspired by robot turtle feedback loops. The author discusses how embracing student interests transforms classroom dynamics.
Star Patterns: An Alternative Approach to Angles – Reinhold Wappler
Presents a classroom activity using recursive star-drawing procedures to introduce children to both procedural turns and static geometric angles simultaneously. The approach connects practical computer drawing with mathematical division and factoring.
Teacher Feature – Rebecca Poplin (Featuring: Mary Upton)
Profiles Texas educator Mary Upton and her award-winning work developing LogoWriter tool pages for data tables and graphs. The feature highlights her experience as a University of Virginia Summer Logo Fellow.
Listful Thinking – Writing by Formula – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Demonstrates how to construct random syllable and chemical compound generators using list processing and random selection tools. The authors explore the chemical valence rules required to automate molecular generation.
Logo LinX – Blank Endorsement – Judi Harris
Introduces a specialized Logo-based letter-coding program designed to help students explore phonics, syllabication, and spelling patterns. The column details procedural coding for visual alphabet representations.
Printing Long Lines in Apple Logo II – Uncredited
Provides utility procedures adapted from Alain Tougas to handle formatting and prevent overprinting when outputting text files longer than 80 columns in Apple Logo II.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews foundational articles by Brian Harvey comparing computer languages and evaluating various Logo implementations. The reviewer highlights resources for establishing computer science rigor.
PenPoints – Logo Book Review with ASTROLUG – Craig Hodgson and Peter Rawitsch
Presents a collaborative book review by a regional Logo users group evaluating a comprehensive middle school Logo curriculum and resource kit. The reviewers discuss the balance between structured worksheets and open-ended exploration.
Objectlogo: A Review – Robs Muir
Explores the advanced architectural features, lexically-scoped variables, and object-oriented programming paradigm of an advanced Macintosh Logo implementation. The reviewer presents benchmark comparisons demonstrating its speed and computational power.
Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Presents a cartoon of classroom pet turtles commenting on student programming styles, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
IntLXual Challenge – Fractal Frolic – Robs Muir
Explores mathematical recursion through fractal geometry, challenging readers to recreate classic curves and branching tree structures. The puzzle emphasizes deep mathematical exploration with turtle graphics.
International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Surveys global Logo developments, including teacher training workshops in Portugal, rural bilingual education projects in Guatemala, and classroom studies in Asia. The section highlights international networking and grassroots expansion.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Celebrates the first anniversary of the international student penpal network, featuring student requests from around the globe. The column provides instructions for joining the classroom correspondence program.

October 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 2)

From the Editor – Sharon Burrowes
Welcomes readers to the second issue under ICCE sponsorship and introduces a new columnist focused on practical curriculum integration. The editor encourages community involvement and feedback through SIGLogo.
Monthly Musings – Tom Lough
Reflects on observations from touring the Soviet Union as an educational computing specialist and discusses common misconceptions about Logo being only for young children. The author ponders ways to broaden adult awareness of Logo’s true power.
Letters to the Editor – John Boddie; Mary Ann Robinson and George E. Uhlig
Features correspondence critiquing traditional empirical research methods in educational computing and sharing success stories from a yearlong first-grade Logo integration study. The letters debate the challenges of measuring higher-order cognitive gains through standardized testing.
Stager’s Stuff – Gary Stager
Introduces a new column dedicated to practical classroom project ideas, beginning with instructions on how students can create branching adventure stories and interactive social studies databases in LogoWriter. The author emphasizes student ownership and collaborative database creation.
LogoLinX – Judi Harris
Explores natural branching patterns in autumn leaves and trees, providing recursive Logo procedures to draw parallel, pinnate, and palmate venation structures. The column connects seasonal observations with recursive mathematics.
Math Worlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring Johnny W. Lott and Ron Bierema)
Presents a guest column on creating M.C. Escher-like tessellations using turtle geometry and arc procedures, alongside reader insights into mathematical patterns in multiple recursion. The editor also highlights recent developments in CLIME and international mathematics conferences.
Customizing Your Logo Environment – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Explains how to configure startup files, bury utility procedures, and utilize site licenses to tailor specialized Logo microworlds for specific classroom subjects. The authors discuss software reusability and operational efficiency.
Logo Picture Tools – Judi Harris
Provides utility procedures that solve the common frustration of losing turtle position and heading when reloading saved picture files in various Logo dialects. The tools streamline multi-session graphics projects for young learners.
Pen Points – Ginny Nyahay
Reviews the workbook Nudges, highlighting its open-ended activities and structured progression for introducing introductory and advanced Logo concepts to young students. The reviewer praises its concise style and immediate applicability for lesson planning.
Using Apple Logo II and the Grappler – Tom Lough
Offers technical instructions and a sample procedure for printing rotated, double-size graphics from Apple Logo II using a parallel Grappler interface card.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews the Atlanta-Emory Logo Project, examining high school students’ relational understanding of geometry and angle measurement through the SOLO taxonomy. The author analyzes clinical interview results and student misconceptions regarding geometric properties.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews seminal conference papers by Seymour Papert and responses by Decker Walker regarding technocentric thinking, computer criticism, and the necessity of systematic research. The reviewer reflects on the cultural integration of technology in schools.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of classroom pet turtles observing a computer screen, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores computational metaphors, anthropomorphism in programming, and the rich potential of list processing, challenging readers to build a procedure that inspects workspace calls. The author also recommends Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind.
Logo Pals – Barbara Randolph
Shares excerpts from student penpal letters reflecting enthusiasm for Logo, and lists new international requests for classroom correspondence.
LX International Logo News – Dennis Harper (Featuring Ken Johnson)
Surveys international events, featuring a report on joint summer schools in London and the First European Logo Conference in Dublin. The dispatches highlight hardware sharing, Control Logo robotics, and regional funding struggles.

November 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 3)

From the Editor – Sharon Burrowes
Apologizes for initial delivery delays during the publisher transition to ICCE and welcomes Eadie Adamson as a new columnist for classroom ideas. The editor urges readers to actively contribute articles, cover art, and feedback.
Monthly Musings – Tom Lough
Reflects on Seymour Papert’s assertion that teaching something directly can deprive a learner of the joy of discovering it, and encourages teachers to ask guiding questions rather than providing canned answers. The author proposes sending thank-you notes to key figures in the Logo movement during November.
Stager’s Stuff – “Playing With Music” Part 1: Problem Solving – Gary Stager
Explores the cognitive and interdisciplinary benefits of combining Logo and music, providing startup procedures and tool functions to play notes, scales, and transpositions. The author outlines how musical composition engages students in deep problem-solving and mathematical thinking.
Math Worlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring Ihor Charischak, Al Cuoco, and Ron Bierema)
Features an electronic network discussion on the dilemma of covering traditional math curricula versus encouraging student-led mathematical discovery, along with student insights into multiple recursion patterns. The editor highlights active community networking through CLIME.
Logo LinX – “Wifty Gifts” – Judi Harris
Explores playful double entendres and procedural puns by reinterpreting familiar Logo tool procedures like SQUARE, PICK, LINE, and INSPECT. The column encourages divergent thinking through humorous twists on standard programming commands.
Logo Ideas – Discovering Random – Eadie Adamson
Presents a classroom experiment for fifth graders to discover how the RANDOM command works through hands-on data collection and charting. The activity leads naturally into discussions of scientific accuracy, probability, and lottery simulations.
Technical Tip – Eadie Adamson
Offers a temporary workaround for printing long text lines in Apple Logo II by utilizing Applewriter or AppleWorks ASCII file export.
Teaching Tools – The Ins and Outs of ASCII – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Explores the historical context of the ASCII code and demonstrates how ASCII and CHAR functions enable advanced tools like custom keyboard controls, encryption ciphers, and peripheral formfeeds. The authors explain how text files facilitate data sharing across different programs.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Reviews Seymour Papert’s “Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking” paper from Logo ’85 and Decker Walker’s response regarding the necessity of systematic research. The reviewer reflects on evaluating Logo use as an integrated cultural element rather than a medical treatment.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Presents a cartoon of classroom pet turtles commenting on computer speed, featuring a winning caption submission from Jacques himself.
Book Review – Marie Balet and Lou DeLucia
Reviews M.P. Burke and L.R. Genise’s textbook Logo and Models of Computation, evaluating its rigorous approach to computer science, algorithmic design, and list processing. The reviewers recommend it for advanced high school students and college courses.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Reflects on personal engagement in computing metaphors, recommends Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind, and challenges readers to build a workspace debugging tool patterned after WHOCALLS.
Logo Pals – Barbara Randolph
Shares student reflections on the joy of learning Logo and lists new international penpal requests from students in Iceland, the United States, and elsewhere.
LX International Logo News – Dennis Harper (Featuring Ken Johnson)
Surveys international developments, including reports on a joint BLUG and InterAction summer school in London and the First European Logo Conference in Dublin. The dispatches highlight robotic control models, special needs breakthroughs, and regional funding challenges.

December 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 4)

From the Editor – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Welcomes readers to the December issue, expresses gratitude to the dedicated columnists who wrote during the publishing transition, and urges readers to actively contribute articles, cover art, and feedback.
Monthly Musings – Tom Lough
Reflects on Seymour Papert’s critique of traditional teaching practices that deprive students of the chance to discover things independently, and encourages educators to ask guiding questions rather than supply quick answers.
Stager’s Stuff – “Playing With Music” Part 1: Problem Solving – Gary Stager
Explores the cognitive and interdisciplinary benefits of combining Logo and music, providing startup procedures and tool functions to play notes, scales, and transpositions. The author outlines how musical composition engages students in deep problem-solving and mathematical thinking.
Math Worlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring Johnny W. Lott and Ron Bierema)
Presents a guest column on creating M.C. Escher-like tessellations using turtle geometry and arc procedures, alongside reader insights into mathematical patterns in multiple recursion. The editor also highlights recent developments in CLIME and international mathematics conferences.
Logo LinX – “Wifty Gifts” – Judi Harris
Explores playful double entendres and procedural puns by reinterpreting familiar Logo tool procedures like SQUARE, PICK, LINE, and INSPECT. The column encourages divergent thinking through humorous twists on standard programming commands.
Teaching Tools – Logophiles and Logo Files – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Demonstrates how to use DRIBBLE files and text editors to record student keystrokes, create instructional text screens, and manage external data logs. The authors emphasize that file handling is an accessible and essential tool for teachers across all curriculum areas.
Logo Ideas – Logo and Aesthetics – Eadie Adamson
Explores how programming environments foster aesthetic appreciation and creative expression through visual pattern design and structured exploration.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Linda Sherman
Features a cartoon of classroom pet turtles observing a computer screen, inviting reader-submitted humorous captions.
Testudinal Testimony – Douglas H. Clements
Reviews research on angle measurement misconceptions and the effectiveness of Logo experiences in developing spatial estimation skills. The column analyzes student schemas for rotation and turn.
IntLXual Challenges – Robs Muir
Explores advanced programming challenges, encouraging sophisticated users to expand their technical horizons and build custom utility tools in Logo.
Logo Pals – Barbara Randolph
Shares excerpts from student penpal letters reflecting enthusiasm for Logo, and lists new international requests for classroom correspondence.
LX International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Surveys global Logo developments, highlighting international networking, teacher training initiatives, and regional classroom implementations.

JANUARY 1988 (Vol. 6, No. 5)

From the Editor – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Yoder announces the first news from the newly formed SIGLogo, introduces the temporary officers, and explains that Bylaws will be voted on at NECC that summer. She invites readers to send news of local Logo user groups and shares her hopes for Logo’s expanding scope in the coming year.
Monthly Musings – Tom Lough
Lough recounts a shopping-trip anecdote in which his four-year-old son directed him through a store using FORWARD, BACK, RIGHT, and LEFT commands as if guiding a turtle. He reflects on the incidental learning opportunities this created and on the importance of staying alert for such moments in daily life.
Logo Ideas – Playing with Polygons – Eadie Adamson
Adamson describes leading students through Polya’s problem-solving steps to discover the angles needed to draw regular polygons, building toward a general POLY procedure. She extends the activity into spiraling shapes, mirror-image turtle designs, and a robot-building project using saved shape tools.
Testudial Testimony – Research on Variables, Algebra, and Logo: Part I – Doug Clements
Clements surveys research comparing students’ understanding of algebraic variables when expressed through equations versus computer programs, citing studies by Soloway, Noss, Lehrer and Smith, and Lawler. He argues that programming environments like Logo can offer a productive entry point into variable concepts, while cautioning that transfer to formal algebra is not automatic.
PenPoints – Logo Book Reviews – Sarah Joyce
Joyce reviews “Teaching with Logo: Building Blocks for Learning” by Molly and Dan Watt, praising its discovery-based structure organized around five hypothetical grade-five students’ diary entries. She highlights the book’s practical classroom guidance and its treatment of Logo as a growing educational culture with both strengths and limitations.
Logo Pals – MIX, STIX, and Logo Penpals – Barbara Randolph
Randolph introduces MIX, a new educators’ teleconferencing exchange with a dedicated Logo conference, and STIX, its companion student exchange moderated by Ardus Erlich. She also describes the postal LogoPals and Logo Class Penpal Network programs for connecting students and teachers worldwide.
Meet the SIGLogo Board – Uncredited
This piece introduces the three acting SIGLogo officers, Peter Rawitsch, Gary S. Stager, and Theodore M. Norton, describing their backgrounds and roles in drafting the SIG’s Bylaws. It reports on the Board’s first business meeting and its statement of purpose to support Logo as a tool for learning and computer science.
IntLXual Challenges – Worms as Algorithms – Robs Muir
Muir builds on A. K. Dewdney’s Scientific American column about special-effects algorithms to develop a Logo procedure for a wandering, worm-like turtle using RANDOM-based turning. He closes with a mathematical challenge, contributed by Tom Lough, to build a normal-distribution random number generator.
Teaching Tools – Frog Algebra – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
The Bulls develop a series of Logo procedures that generate a parabolic curve of coordinates and use them to animate a turtle, reshaped as a frog, leaping in a realistic arc. They connect the activity to Papert’s remarks on algebraic curves in Mindstorms and to broader uses of computer graphing in algebra instruction.
Stager’s Stuff – Playing with Music, Part 2: Child Composers – Gary S. Stager
Stager presents Logo techniques for musical composition, including “tune block” procedures students can combine like building blocks, tone poems, and rules for Schoenberg-style serial and atonal music. He also provides a graphic notation procedure that plots pitch and duration as a composition plays.
Logo LinX – ‘sNo Mystery – Judi Harris
Harris explains the science of snow crystal formation, from molecular structure to the temperature ranges that produce different crystal shapes, and connects it to a Logo SNOWSTORM procedure. The program uses STELLAR and PLATE superprocedures to generate randomized six-branched snowflake graphics on screen.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Craig continues his review of the academic response to Papert’s paper on technocentric thinking, summarizing critiques from Roy Pea and Henry Becker. He notes their shared call for the Logo community to substitute rigorous empirical research for anecdotal claims about Logo’s educational effects.
Global News – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Educational Informatics working group, State University of Ghent)
This column profiles the EDIF (Educational Informatics) working group at the State University of Ghent, Belgium, describing its research into Logo as a problem-solving environment and its role in curriculum integration. It also outlines the group’s in-service training, student courses, industry collaborations, and international activities including the EUROLOGO conference.

FEBRUARY 1988 (Vol. 6, No. 6)

From the Editor – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder introduces the newly printed SIGLogo bylaws and invites readers to consider how they might contribute to the organization. She also reflects on two threads running through the issue: a broadening of Logo into areas like sound and hypertext, and a deepening exploration of Logo’s underlying grammar and structure.
From the President – Peter Rawitsch
Peter Rawitsch reflects on the recursive process of SIGLogo’s board creating the bylaws that in turn create the board, and reviews the organization’s challenges and growth over the past year. He previews SIGLogo’s first general business meeting at NECC ’88 in Dallas and calls for volunteers, including an Acting-Treasurer and a Nominations Committee.
Monthly Musings – Hyper Hype – Tom Lough
Tom Lough recounts his first encounters with Apple’s new HyperCard application and Danny Goodman’s HyperCard Handbook, describing how the HyperTalk language lets ordinary users build their own “stackware.” He draws parallels between HyperCard and Logo as authoring tools and invites readers to explore HyperCard’s educational potential for themselves.
SIGLogo Bylaws – Uncredited
This document presents the full text of the Special Interest Group for Logo-Using Educators’ bylaws, covering membership, dues, officer elections, board duties, amendments, dissolution, and regional chapters. It formally establishes the governance structure under which SIGLogo operates as part of ICCE.
Logo Ideas – Creating a Kaleidoscope – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson lays out a step-by-step Logo Writer project, adapted from David Thornburg’s work, in which students build a WINDMILL and IMAGE procedure that randomly combines polygons, colors, and distances into kaleidoscope-like designs. She details a cooperative, problem-posing teaching sequence using PICK, recursion, and READCHAR to make the generator interactive.
Natural Language Microworlds: An Answer to the Challenge – Michael Tempel
Michael Tempel responds to Robs Muir’s earlier challenge by arguing that turtle graphics and list processing are not as separate as often assumed, illustrating this with procedures and Peter Rawitsch’s Logo Zoo. He revisits Bob Lawler’s pioneering “Beach World” microworld and compares several Logo techniques, including custom interpreters, for building natural-language learning environments.
Teaching Tools – Sound Concepts – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Glen Bull and Gina Bull present Logo procedures that simulate a turtle traveling back and forth in a “tube” and ping-pong balls bumping into each other, using these models to teach sound wave frequency and pitch. They tie the on-screen simulations to parallel physical classroom activities, such as timed footraces and student chains, to reinforce the underlying science concepts.
LogoLinx – Rhyme Paradigm – Judi Harris
Judi Harris introduces “HINKY PINKY” rhyming word puzzles as a language arts activity that builds vocabulary, syllabication, and rhyming skills. She shows how Logo procedures using PICK and word lists can generate, store, and describe new rhyming puzzles for classroom use.
Stager’s Stuff – The Subject is Predicates – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager explains what Logo predicates are and how they function as true/false “checking machines,” walking through primitive predicates and naming conventions. He demonstrates their versatility through classroom examples involving factors, even and odd numbers, name classification, and a rudimentary spelling checker.
InLXual Challenges – Structuring the Structure – Robs Muir
Robs Muir examines the grammatical distinction between Logo commands and operators, comparing operators to “meat grinders” that always produce output. He poses a series of reader challenges about Logo syntax and previews a project for diagramming Logo statements visually.
Testudinal Testimony – Research on Variables, Algebra, and Logo, Part II: Misconceptions and Suggestions – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas Clements surveys research on student misconceptions about variables, both in traditional mathematics and in Logo programming, drawing on studies by Wagner, Hillel and Samurçay, du Boulay, and Sutherland. He summarizes teaching strategies these researchers proposed, including structured Logo tasks and function-machine activities, for building stronger conceptual bridges between Logo and algebra.
PenPoints – Logo Book Reviews – Gayle Lawrence (Featuring: Gini Shimabukuro)
Gayle Lawrence reviews Gini Shimabukuro’s “Thinking in Logo,” praising its comprehensive ten-lesson structure, appendixes, and teacher tutorial for primary-grade Logo instruction. She also critiques the book’s repetitive Think Sheets and its early emphasis on syntax and precise turning angles over free exploration.
Logo Pals – Barbara Randolph
Barbara Randolph shares her new hobby of learning string figures and introduces a new group of LogoPal correspondents from Seattle seeking international pen pals to write about their hobbies and Logo experiences. She also asks established LogoPal partners from the prior school year to confirm that they are still corresponding.
LXionary – Bill Craig
Bill Craig revisits Uri Leron’s 1985 commentary on unresolved issues facing the Logo community, including the teacher’s proper role and how Logo learning should be researched. He also discusses a Computing Teacher article by Au, Horton, and Ryba that details specific types of effective teacher intervention for developing thinking skills with Logo.
LX International Logo News – Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper, writing from his new post in the Virgin Islands, recounts a chaotic five-minute Logo demonstration given to 200 teachers in the British Virgin Islands. He then reports on a more rigorous multi-year Logo research project in Flemish primary schools in Gent, Belgium, which found measurable gains in specific mathematical skills among Logo-using students.
What Your Love of Logo Reveals about You – Cara Garcia
Cara Garcia offers a self-scoring questionnaire that helps teachers determine whether their approach to planning, teaching, and evaluating a Logo lesson leans behaviorist or cognitivist. She then discusses the theoretical tension between these two orientations and argues that Logo teaching is often undermined when cognitivist ideals are paired with behaviorist classroom practices.

March 1988 (Vol. 6, No. 7)

From the Editor: Logo is Dead… Long Live HyperCard? – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Reflects on conference chatter suggesting Logo is being eclipsed by HyperCard, questioning whether HyperCard risks being oversold the way Logo once was. Points readers to this issue’s “Powerful Ideas in Problem Solving and Logo” article as a step toward addressing why research has not confirmed Logo’s promised problem-solving benefits.
Monthly Musings – Hyper Hype II – Tom Lough
Explores parallels between HyperCard’s HyperTalk scripting and Logo, comparing HyperTalk’s “on” message handlers to the WHEN demons of Atari Logo and contrasting HyperCard’s local, object-hierarchy scripts with Logo’s global procedure workspace. Demonstrates the similarity between HyperTalk functions and Logo procedures through a side-by-side factorial example.
Logo Ideas – Using SETH: When, Why and How? – Eadie Adamson
Explains the SETH (SETHEADING) command as an absolute-direction tool tied to compass points, describing when and how to introduce it to young students through classroom anecdotes from kindergarten and fourth grade. Offers diagrams and sample procedures such as SQUARE and SPINSQUARES that combine SETH with OUTPUT to reinforce the concept.
Powerful Ideas in Problem Solving and Logo – Dave Moursund and Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Introduces a planned article series examining why research fails to confirm that Logo programming transfers to general problem-solving skills, arguing that teachers must deliberately teach for transfer rather than expect it automatically. Illustrates the powerful idea of “breaking big problems into smaller problems” through multiple decompositions of a house drawing and a list of everyday, non-computer examples.
Teaching Tools – “Programming with Style” – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Presents four strategies for writing well-structured Logo programs: keeping procedures short, using meaningful names, formatting code so patterns are visible, and maintaining state transparency. Illustrates each principle with paired examples, including a HOUSE procedure tree and a turtle-pen state-transparency comparison.
Math Worlds – Gattegno and Papert – A.J. (Sandy) Dawson
Draws connections between Caleb Gattegno’s “subordination of teaching to learning” approach to mathematics and Papert’s conception of Logo math worlds, tracing both men’s shared intellectual roots in Piaget. Illustrates Gattegno’s four themes of expressing generality, rearranging and reversing, possibilities and constraints, and generalized arithmetic using Cuisenaire rod examples, then maps each theme onto corresponding Logo teaching practices.
LogoLinx – “After Before Comes…?” – Judi Harris
Presents a wordplay exploration in which each letter of a word shifts to the “next” letter of the alphabet, illustrated through examples like HAL becoming IBM and an analysis of the vowel-consonant patterns that result. Provides Logo procedures using ASCII and CHAR, including NEXT, NEXT.WORD, and AFTERWORD, that let students generate these “afterwords” automatically.
InLXual Challenge – HyperLogo? – Robs Muir
Contrasts Logo’s body-syntonic turtle graphics with HyperCard’s Cartesian-coordinate-based HyperTalk graphics, describing an existing HyperCard turtle-graphics stack built with colleagues via CompuServe. Challenges readers to write Logo procedures such as MY.FD and MY.RT that simulate FORWARD, BACK, RIGHT, and LEFT using only SETPOS, SETX, SETY, SIN, and COS, without relying on Logo’s built-in turtle commands.
PartialLogo on a HyperCard: Turtle Graphics in HyperCard – Robs Muir
Provides a full HyperTalk script, credited largely to David Dunham with contributions from several CompuServe collaborators, that implements basic turtle graphics commands such as FORWARD, BACK, RIGHT, LEFT, and SETPOS natively within HyperCard. Notes that the resulting turtle movement is notably slow compared to dedicated Logo environments.
Testudinal Testimony – Research on Variables, Algebra, and Logo, Part III: Algebra from Arithmetic – Douglas H. Clements
Discusses Thompson and Dreyfus’s research on a Logo-based INTEGERS microworld that represents integers as turtle translation operations to help sixth graders build algebraic concepts of variables from arithmetic. Details case-study findings showing students gradually distinguishing position from change of position and learning to compose and negate integer expressions, though their reasoning remained inconsistent.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Shares a Lakota creation story about Turtle Island as a companion piece to the column, then introduces a new group of Logo-using students seeking international pen pals. Lists each child’s name, location, age, and interests alongside instructions for teachers and students on joining the LogoPals network.
The Adventures of Jacques and Elsie – Uncredited (Drawings by Linda Sherman)
Presents a single-panel cartoon captioned “This must be a nightmare. Jacques promised me we’d never live in a condo,” continuing the strip despite mailing delays. Invites readers to submit their own captions to illustrator Linda Sherman for future installments.
Pen Points – Logo Book Reviews with ASTROLUG – Barbara J. Putnam
Reviews “Beginning With Logo” (Terrapin Version) by Steve Tipps and Glen Bull, praising its five-part chapter structure covering concepts, technical skills, lab exercises, classroom suggestions, and command summaries as a strong preservice or inservice teacher text. Notes the book’s helpful programming tips and off-computer classroom activities while pointing out its typographical errors, and awards it an ASTROLUG thumbs up.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Edna O. Schack, Markham B. Schack, Hillel Weintraub)
Compiles international reports including a firsthand account by Edna and Markham Schack of teaching Logo to enthusiastic students and teachers at Ruseas High School in Lucea, Jamaica, and an update from outgoing Asian editor Hillel Weintraub on the development of a Japanese-language LogoWriter and Seymour Papert’s teacher-training visit to Japan. Also relays editor Dennis Harper’s own experience encountering resistance to introducing Logo in Virgin Islands schools.

April 1988 (Vol. 6, No. 8)

Who Owns Logo? (From the Editor) – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on questions of intellectual ownership within the Logo community, citing examples like the PICK procedure and dynamic turtle microworlds whose true originators are often uncredited. She argues that scholars, Logo historians, and enthusiastic newcomers each have a legitimate voice in Logo Exchange, favoring the Logo culture’s ethic of open sharing over strict citation.
Monthly Musings – HyperHype III – Tom Lough
Tom Lough concludes his three-part comparison of HyperCard and Logo by exploring self-modification, showing how HyperCard’s script property parallels Logo’s ability to redefine its own procedures. He walks through a Logo example using DEFINE, TEXT, and a custom IS procedure to build self-modifying code, then connects the idea to personalized, learner-driven educational software.
Bottom Up Programming – Dave Moursund and Sharon Burrowes Yoder
The authors explain bottom-up programming, in which students combine simple building-block procedures like HOUSE, SQUARE, and TRIANGLE into unplanned, creative combinations rather than working toward a predetermined goal. They discuss techniques for teaching this approach, its relationship to creativity and problem solving, and offer ten real-world analogies for transferring the skill beyond Logo.
LogoLinx – Sunny Side Up – Judi Harris
In an April Fools-themed column, Judi Harris introduces emoticons as a form of keyboard-character humor and demonstrates Logo list-processing procedures that output and randomly generate emoticon faces from lists of eyes, noses, and mouths. She invites readers to submit their own students’ text-face creations for a future compilation in the newsletter.
LXionary – Logo Articles – Bill Craig
Bill Craig reviews an article by school superintendent Howard Rubin that questions Logo’s transferability to elementary curricula in favor of word processing instruction, and a second article surveying findings from nineteen dissertations on Logo’s effects in elementary classrooms. He reflects on the mixed and often inconclusive research evidence, framing evaluation of Logo’s instructional value as the most pressing issue facing the Logo community.
Making the Switch to LogoWriter 2.0 – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson walks Apple educators through the practical considerations of upgrading to the ProDOS-based LogoWriter 2.0, highlighting new features such as doubled page memory, page locking, SAVETEXT/LOADTEXT, and newly built-in primitives. She provides a detailed, step-by-step procedure for converting student disks and managing printer settings, drawn from her own classroom experience.
Logo Connections: An Open Architecture for Logo – Glen Bull, Gina Bull, Tom Lough, Judi Harris and Cheryl Wissick
The authors revisit Papert’s 1971 paper “Twenty Things You Can Do with a Computer” and present an updated version illustrating how Logo can be linked to videodiscs, robots, sensors, spreadsheets, and telecommunications through open hardware and software architectures. They discuss why some Logo implementations remain more open than others, citing both memory constraints and differing design philosophies among Logo’s developers.
Testudinal Testimony – Research on Variables, Algebra, and Logo, Part IV: Logo Tools – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas Clements examines a Logo-based pre-algebra curriculum built around microworlds such as Logo Gossip, function machines, a marbles-and-bags variable metaphor, and the Algebra Workbench expert system. He reports that while sixth graders learned algebra concepts within these environments, transfer to traditional algebra formats proved limited, underscoring the importance of matching representational complexity to students’ Logo fluency.
Math Worlds – Sandy Dawson (Featuring: Lisa Haverty and Robert Hogg)
Sandy Dawson showcases secondary students’ mathematical work with Logo, including a Woburn High School senior’s recursive procedures for generating permutations to analyze a combination lock’s possible codes. He also presents a coordinate-geometry project by an Alberta teacher and his son that uses LogoWriter to plot two points, calculate slope, and locate a segment’s bisector.
PenPoints – Logo Book Reviews (AstroLug) – Carol Gans, Gayle Lawrence and Peter Rawitch
Three ASTROLUG members hold a roundtable-style discussion reviewing the LogoWriter Primary Classroom Materials Kit, evaluating its Teacher’s Guide, Activity Cards, and cross-curricular links to math, language arts, and science. They ultimately give the kit a mixed review, praising its documentation while critiquing its Scrapbook Disk and questioning whether its activities are truly developmentally appropriate for primary students.
InLXual Challenges – Recursive Spirals: Time and Again – Robs Muir
Robs Muir explores equiangular, or logarithmic, spirals found in nature and demonstrates the recursive EQSPI Logo procedure for generating them, then extends the technique to spirals built from isosceles right triangles and quadrilaterals. He closes with several open-ended programming challenges involving the Pythagorean theorem and the changing rotational period of a growing spiral.
Stager’s Stuff – One Turtle, One Vote (or Papert for President?) – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager presents a complete LogoWriter 2.0 voting-booth program timed to the 1988 presidential primaries, allowing teachers to set up any number of parties and candidates, collect votes, and display sorted results. He explains the underlying list-processing and recursive code and suggests companion classroom activities like campaign commercials, demographic graphs, and voter registration forms.
LogoPals – Barbara Randolph
Barbara Randolph recounts her first hands-on experience building flashing stoplights, sensor-driven cars, and a turtle robot with Lego and Logo, praising the constructive, exploratory nature of the medium. She then lists new American students seeking international Logo pen pals and explains how teachers can register their classes with the LogoPals network.
International Logo News – Tom Lough
Tom Lough describes introducing Logo to Soviet visitors while working at a US-USSR cultural exchange exhibition in Moscow, demonstrating word-and-list procedures and turtle graphics reconfigured with Russian-language commands like NALEVO and NAPRAVO. He reports that many Soviet educators, previously dismissive of Logo as a children’s language, grew genuinely intrigued, and notes reports that Seymour Papert and Sylvia Weir may have visited the USSR to explore Logo’s potential there.

May 1988 (Vol. 6, No. 9)

From the Editor – Together We Did It! – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on completing her first full year as editor, thanking ICCE staff, loyal columnists, and Robs Muir for redesigning the newsletter’s layout in PageMaker. She closes the volume by urging members to write articles, contribute student cover art, and recruit new colleagues to SIGLogo over the summer.
Monthly Musings – Turn, Turn, Turn – Tom Lough
Tom Lough examines children’s naive misconceptions about the turtle’s RIGHT and LEFT commands, drawing on a research article by Fay and Mayer that explains why students confuse turning with movement and struggle with the turtle’s egocentric frame of reference. He offers a modified DRIVE procedure that lets a student steer the turtle live with keypresses to help correct these misunderstandings.
Logo Ideas – SPRING! LogoWriter as a Gardener’s Tool – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson describes building a LogoWriter program that lets her school librarian plan a garden by moving, stamping, and unstamping flower shapes with keypresses, including a SETSHAPE procedure for switching plant designs and linked data pages for tracking planting information. She discusses extending the same approach to drawing tools, city planning, and other classroom projects.
LogoLinx – Did Nietzsche Know Logo? – Judi Harris
Judi Harris juxtaposes passages from Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms with quotations from Nietzsche and other historical philosophers to show that Logo’s educational philosophy echoes ideas expressed long before computers existed. She compiles an extensive collection of quotations on learning, problem-solving, education, and teaching gathered from writers across centuries to illustrate this continuity.
Logo in China – Key Educators Learn Logo at the People’s Education Press, in Beijing, China – Molly Watt
Molly Watt recounts a month-long workshop in which a team of American educators trained forty Chinese curriculum leaders in Logo and educational computing at the People’s Education Press in Beijing. She describes the workshop’s goals, the cultural resonance between Logo and Chinese language and symbolism, and the lasting educational computing center the visit helped establish.
Math Worlds – A Mandelbrot Primer – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Harold Brochmann)
Sandy Dawson introduces graduate student Harold Brochmann, who then explains how he wrote an LCSI Macintosh Logo program to plot the Mandelbrot set after encountering it in a Scientific American article. He presents the Logo procedures used to test whether points belong to the set and shows a magnified image revealing the intricate structure of its boundary.
Teaching Tools – “Logo Reflections” – Glen Bull
Glen Bull marks his sixth year and fiftieth-plus column for the newsletter with a retrospective on its history, tracing its evolution from the National Logo Exchange founded by Tom Lough to its current form under ICCE. He reflects on Logo’s greater impact as an educational idea than as a programming language and speculates about future directions such as the Boxer environment.
Building on Previous Work – Dave Moursund and Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Dave Moursund and Sharon Burrowes Yoder explore how building on one’s own and others’ previous work underlies both problem-solving and the Logo learning philosophy, using a pencil-sharpener example to discuss how children construct mental models. They offer discussion questions and classroom activities designed to help students recognize and apply the concept of transfer.
IntLXual Challenges – Turtle Waves – Robs Muir
Robs Muir uses the metaphor of a “society of procedures” to explain how Logo operations and commands communicate, then builds a set of procedures that use the SIN operation to draw sine waves with the turtle. He extends the idea to curved, non-linear wave paths and announces that this is the final installment of his long-running Logo Challenges column.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper reports international Logo news including the British Logo User Group’s 1988 conference announcement, a letter and translated article from Chinese teacher Wu Andong describing a Chinese-character version of MIT Logo, and Harry Pinxteren’s profile of the Logo Centrum Nederland research organization. The column surveys current Logo activity underway in England, China, and the Netherlands.
LXionary – Logo Articles – Bill Craig
Bill Craig reviews two published articles by Michael Battista and Douglas Clements that describe MATHSTUFF Logo procedures designed to connect Logo programming explicitly with middle and high school geometry curricula. He praises the effort at genuine curriculum integration but notes that the high school procedures’ reliance on Object Logo for the Macintosh limits their accessibility to most teachers.
Logo Pals – Barbara Randolph
Barbara Randolph introduces herself as the LogoPals network’s coordinator, sharing her background and interests, and prints letters from children across the United States seeking Logo pen pals. She invites teachers to have students write in with their age, grade, hobbies, and Logo experience so they can be matched with pen pals worldwide.

Volume 7 (1988–1989)

SEPTEMBER 1988 (Vol. 7, No. 1)

From the Editor – Take Some Time – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on her cross-country move from New York City to Eugene, Oregon, and the way the journey deepened her appreciation for America’s diversity and for Logo as a universal language among students everywhere. She welcomes new columnists Dan Watt and Leslie Thyberg to the magazine and encourages readers to take time for reflection and to submit their own articles and student work.
Monthly Musings – Forward and Back: A Special Trip – Tom Lough
Tom Lough opens the magazine’s seventh volume with an update on SIGLogo’s growth and bylaws, then introduces a simple FB (forward-back) Logo procedure that demonstrates state-transparent turtle motion through examples like drawing flowers and tick marks on a line. He extends the procedure into a metaphor for feedback and personal adjustment in life, and invites readers to share their favorite Logo commands.
Little Kids and Logo – A Bushel and a Peck – Leslie Thyberg
In her debut column for younger students, Leslie Thyberg presents a cross-curricular apple-ology unit that ties orchard field trips, vocabulary building, and art projects to Logo activities, including turtle-graphics procedures for drawing apples and leaves. She also offers ideas for classroom management, such as a golden-rules tree, and Logo list-processing procedures that generate random sentences about the harvest.
Logo Ideas – (Almost) All You Need to Know About Subdirectories in Logo Writer V2.0 – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson walks readers step by step through creating, populating, and copying LogoWriter 2.0 subdirectories, covering single- and two-drive setups and the built-in COPY.TOOLS utility. She also shares a custom COPYTOSUB procedure she wrote to automatically consolidate a colleague’s old student files into a new subdirectory without the runaway copying problem COPY.TOOLS caused.
Stager’s Stuff – Another Bunch of Election Stuff – Gary Stager
Gary Stager extends his earlier voting-machine project with new Logo procedures that generate pie charts of election results by party and candidate. He also introduces a separate referendum ballot program that lets students enter yes/no survey questions, tally responses, and display the results as a bar graph.
LogoLinX – Secular Conversions – Judi Harris
Judi Harris explains why Logo’s unpacked hi-res pictures and Print Shop’s packed graphic files are normally incompatible, then details how the Beagle Bros. Minipix editor can convert images between the two formats. She provides detailed step-by-step instructions for moving pictures from Print Shop into Logo projects and from Logo into Print Shop banners, signs, and greeting cards.
Math Worlds – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Jerome Bruner)
A. J. (Sandy) Dawson draws on Jerome Bruner’s distinction between narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought to argue that mathematics and Logo teaching should make more room for negotiation, dialogue, and the recreating of meaning rather than pure logical deduction. He calls for mathematics classrooms to adopt the collaborative, project-based Logo culture and shares an update on CLIME membership.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – What Are Your Logo Students Learning? – Dan Watt
In his debut column launching a series on assessing Logo learning, Dan Watt analyzes a sixth grader’s turtle-graphics procedure to illustrate both the sophisticated ideas students absorb and the gaps, such as unnamed procedures and unused subprocedures, that teachers can address. He outlines the rationale behind his and Molly Watt’s classroom research project and introduces eight categories of Critical Aspects of Logo Learning that will structure future columns.
Logo Connections – The Journey from Lego to Logo – Glen Bull and Gina Bull (Featuring: Stephen Bull)
Glen and Gina Bull launch a new column exploring Logo’s connections to the physical world, tracing the idea back to Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon’s 1971 vision of sensors and controllable devices in Logo. They illustrate Lego-Logo’s potential for tinkering-based learning through a detailed account of their young son Stephen experimenting with motors, colored lights, and propellers.
Variables and Problem Solving – Dave Moursund and Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Dave Moursund and Sharon Yoder explain the mathematical idea of generalizability and show how Logo procedures with inputs, illustrated through square-drawing, Pig Latin translation, and digit-summing examples, embody the concept of a variable. They close with transfer examples showing how the same idea of variables and their allowable value sets appears across science, logic, math, and social studies classrooms.
Search and Research – Early Experiences with Mathematics – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas H. Clements reviews a body of research on young children’s early mathematical experiences with Logo, covering studies on number and shape recognition, arithmetic reasoning, and measurement and estimation among preschool and primary-grade students. He concludes that Logo can meaningfully supplement, though not replace, concrete mathematical experiences even for very young learners.
Global News – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jose Valente)
Dennis Harper reports from the NECC ’88 conference in Dallas on the founding of SIGLogo and the ICCE international committee’s efforts to support Logo educators worldwide. He also introduces new Latin American editor Jose Valente, who surveys the government-sponsored growth of computers and Logo in Brazilian education.
The Value of a Group Project for Teachers of Logo – Charles R. McNerney
Charles R. McNerney describes how his university’s Apple Logo workshops for teachers are built around a semester-long group project, requiring three-person teams to design and continually expand an original Logo creation. He argues, drawing on Papert’s Mindstorms, that this project-based structure fosters the collaborative, discovery-oriented learning that defines an effective Logo environment.

OCTOBER 1988 (Vol. 7, No. 2)

From the Editor – Where Are We Going? – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Reflects on Logo’s evolution over eight years since Mindstorms, noting growing acceptance of Logo beyond elementary grades as students carry forward programming skills and newer versions like LogoWriter and Logo Plus expand into desktop-publishing-like tools. Raises questions about Logo’s future role in schools, considering curriculum standards, book publications, and where Logo might fit as a “HyperLogo” productivity tool.
Monthly Musings – Incomplete Perceptions – Tom Lough
Uses the parable of blind people examining an elephant to illustrate how educators often form incomplete opinions of Logo based on limited exposure. Recounts a workshop with skeptical high school physics teachers who grew enthusiastic once they discovered Logo’s power for secondary-level applications like planar motion and electrostatics.
SigLogo News – Annual NECC Meeting – Theodore Norton
Reports the minutes of the first general meeting of ICCE’s Special Interest Group for Logo-Using Educators held at NECC, covering adoption of SIGLogo bylaws, election of officers, and membership and financial reports. Also recounts new-business discussions on conference co-sponsorship, a children’s computer conference, telecommunications subcommittees, and microworld documentation standards.
Logo Ideas – A Logo Message Center – Eadie Adamson
Describes a LogoWriter “message center” project used at a Parents’ Night event, letting parents type secret messages for their children to discover the next day, and explains the underlying WRITE, GETNAME, GETMESSAGE, and SAVEMESSAGE procedures. Also details a PRT procedure that cycles through LogoWriter pages to automatically print every stored message.
Stager’s Stuff – A Microful of Monkeys – Gary Stager (Featuring: Seymour Papert)
Presents a series of classroom experiments inspired by Seymour Papert in which Logo procedures randomly generate three-letter combinations in an attempt to produce the word “CAT,” exploring probability, randomness, and vocabulary along the way. Walks through progressively refined versions of the CREATE.WORDS procedure, adding vowel-consonant patterns and letter-frequency weighting to increase the odds of generating recognizable English words.
The Emerald Isle Shines Again – Logo Contest Report – Donald Piele
Announces the results of the 1988 International Computer Problem Solving Contest’s Elementary Logo Division, in which twelve-year-old Anne Chazarreta of Cork, Ireland took first place for the second consecutive year an Irish student won the title. Includes background on Anne from a letter by Michael Moynihan of the Computer Education Society of Ireland, along with the full rankings table and editor Sharon Yoder’s observations on what separated winning teams by programming style.
LogoLinX – The Stranger, the Better – Judi Harris
Demonstrates how Logo procedures using RANDOM and PICK can generate open-ended metaphor and analogy prompts, such as “How is a sailboat like a paintbrush?”, to spark students’ creative writing. Provides sample NOUN, VERB, IDEA, and COMPARISON procedures and argues that such computer-generated prompts assist rather than replace human creative thinking.
Logo Connections – Math Connections – Glen and Gina Bull
Revisits Papert’s concept of “Mathland” and describes how a young child’s LEGO-Logo airplane project led him to invent a FAST procedure for controlling propeller speed, which inadvertently motivated him to grasp subtraction while counting down remaining speed increases. Suggests that robotics projects can make numbers meaningful to children in ways abstract exercises cannot, and that Logo and graphics-tablet programs can be combined for richer results.
Math Worlds – Life with Logo – Jim Noyes; editor Sandy Dawson
Presents Jim Noyes’s ColorLIFE program, an IBM Logo implementation of Conway’s Game of Life that assigns different colors to cells based on their age across generations. Explains the property-list data structure used to track each cell’s birth, survival, and death, and shows sample generations for patterns including a stabilizing shape and the R-Pentomino.
LogoWriter and ASCII Files – Eadie Adamson
Explains step-by-step how to load ASCII text files from word processors like AppleWorks into LogoWriter pages, and conversely how to save LogoWriter pages as text files for use in other programs. Also covers how to check the file list and erase unwanted text files from a LogoWriter disk.
Little Kids and Logo – Oh, Shucks! – Leslie Thyberg
Introduces a “Composite Process Model” that applies the stages of the writing process, topic choice, rehearsal, composing, reading, and revision, to teaching Logo programming and problem solving in elementary classrooms. Illustrates the approach with a fall-harvest-themed classroom scenario and describes classroom management rules like “Three Before Me” that build a self-supporting learning culture.
Assessing Logo Learning in the Classroom – Procedures and Subprocedures – Daniel Watt
Continues a research-based series identifying seven levels of sophistication in students’ use of Logo procedures and subprocedures, from pre-procedures through modular and recursive programming. Illustrates each stage with annotated examples of real student work, including Kathy’s toothbrush, Brad’s city, and Heather’s Statue of Liberty drawing.
Logo: Search and Research – Problem Solving: Beauty and the Beast – Douglas H. Clements
Opens a new research-review series on problem solving by examining what distinguishes a genuine “problem” from routine drill or application, drawing on Robert Sternberg’s theory of metacomponents that plan, represent, and monitor problem-solving processes. Previews upcoming columns that will connect this research to teaching techniques and eventually to Logo-specific problem solving.
In Memorium – Uncredited (edited by Dennis Harper)
Announces the death of Fred Klotz, an Irish computing-in-education pioneer and organizer of the first European Logo Conference, who died from injuries sustained in a cycling accident. Remembers his role introducing many Irish primary teachers to computers and his broader contributions to the international computers-in-education community.
Global News – Fishing with Logo in Costa Rica – Hillel Weintraub; editor Dennis Harper (Featuring: Mitch Resnick, Marta Santamaria Marin, Nuria Jimenez Montero)
Reports on Costa Rica’s Genesis project, a national initiative launched under President Oscar Arias that paired MIT’s Logo group with Costa Rican teacher trainers to bring constructionist, Logo-based learning into public schools. Draws on interviews with Costa Rican teacher-trainers Marta Santamaria Marin and Nuria Jimenez Montero to describe the training model, its emphasis on long-term teacher support, and challenges in shifting teachers away from traditional instruction.

NOVEMBER 1988 (Vol. 7, No. 3)

From the Editor – Logo: It’s Not Just for Little Kids – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Reflects on her long advocacy for using Logo with secondary students, tracing how LogoWriter’s cross-curricular capabilities have shifted incoming students’ expectations of computer classrooms. Calls on secondary educators and materials developers to create more sophisticated, subject-appropriate Logo resources for older learners.
Monthly Musings – Tortoisensitivity – Tom Lough
Recounts a chain of personal turtle-related memories, from sea turtle conservation work with HEART to rescuing a box turtle from traffic and displaying his family’s turtle collection for visiting Logo fellows. Reflects on how years of working with the cybernetic Logo turtle have deepened his appreciation for real turtles and the natural world.
Little Kids and Logo – Simple Gifts – Leslie Thyberg
Presents the first of a two-part series on off-computer and on-computer readiness activities that help young children move from an introductory phase into process-oriented Logo learning, drawing on Applebee’s and Piaget’s research. Describes classroom techniques such as clay turtles, turtle puppets, Logo Logs, and a licensing system for managing student computer access.
Logo Ideas – A Logo Concert – Eadie Adamson
Describes how a fourth-grade class learned to write LogoWriter music by exploring the TONE primitive, building note procedures into a MUSICTOOLS tool page, and programming a familiar carol as a superprocedure of phrase subprocedures. Explains how the project culminated in a class concert where students composed and performed their own pieces for their classroom teachers.
Stager’s Stuff – Physics for Kindergartners – Gary Stager
Demonstrates how Logo, including REPEAT loops, WAIT commands, and LogoWriter events, can simulate physics concepts such as velocity, friction, and acceleration through activities like a turtle racer and a gas-pedal/brake simulation. Provides reporter procedures for calculating speed, average velocity, and unit conversions from experimental timing data, including use with LEGO TC Logo optosensors.
The SIGLogo Song – What Do We Stand For? – Peter Rawitsch
Presents the lyrics to a humorous song, written and performed by SIGLogo president Peter Rawitsch at the Dallas conference, that surveys different members’ views on what SIGLogo and Logo stand for. Features verses voicing a teacher, a sales rep, an administrator, and a professor, each offering a different take on Logo’s meaning and value.
LogoLinX – A Warped Idea – Judi Harris
Explores how the “plaid” patterns students often create with REPEAT and RIGHT commands can become a springboard for studying the history of Scottish tartans and hand weaving. Provides PATTERNSTICK, WARP, WEFT, and WEAVE procedures for simulating loom weaving in Logo as a cross-curricular link to social studies.
Logo Connections – LogoWriter Connections – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Discusses the new ProDOS version of LogoWriter’s connectivity features, including LOADTEXT and LOADPIC commands for importing programs, text, and pictures from other Logo dialects, word processors, and clip-art libraries. Covers methods for transferring files between Apple and IBM systems via telecommunications or hardware cards, and using the undocumented .OUT command to drive speech synthesizers and videodisc players.
Mixing Procedures and Data in Logo – A Mad-Libs Implementation – Michael Katz
Presents an elegant Mad-Libs program that uses Logo’s TEXT primitive to treat procedures as data, letting word lists and stories be entered as ordinary procedures rather than bracketed lists. Provides the TELL, TELL1, TELL2, and PICK procedures along with sample grammar and story procedures that randomly substitute parts of speech into a story as it is read aloud.
Math Worlds – Lego/Logo – Sandy Dawson
Reports on a five-month pilot study of Lego/Logo in three suburban Vancouver classrooms, describing how a grade-five class became deeply engaged with building and dismantling motorized creations for a final parent showcase. Shares student-written poems reflecting on the excitement and frustration of the project and previews a larger study beginning that fall.
Lego TC logo – Some First Impressions – Theodore M. Norton and Howard A. Peelle
Offers early impressions of the Lego TC Logo system, describing enthusiastic reactions from teachers and a young test user who built a musical merry-go-round, and considers how the product extends Logo’s turtle concept into physical construction and control. Raises open questions about whether Lego and Logo represent a smooth conceptual continuum and notes concerns about the product’s cost for cash-strapped school districts.
About the Cover – Uncredited (Featuring: James MacPhee and Margaret Kenny)
Explains that the issue’s cover designs were created by James MacPhee, a Boston College mathematics education major, as part of an optical-illusion project for middle and high school geometry classes. Quotes his teacher, Margaret Kenny, on the philosophy of using Logo so students apply geometric concepts while creating the graphics themselves.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – II. Using Variables – Dan Watt
Continues a research-based series on critical aspects of Logo learning by outlining a progression of student understanding of variables, from pre-variable thinking through simple and multiple inputs to recursion and global variables. Illustrates each level with annotated examples of actual student procedures from a National Science Foundation study of grade 4-6 classrooms.
Search and Research – Problem-Solving Processes: The Mental Company – Douglas H. Clements
Explores the metacomponents of problem solving in Sternberg’s theory, focusing on how mental schemes help students understand a problem, select a representation and strategy, and recognize familiar problem types. Uses reading-comprehension passages and a child’s rhythmic counting strategy to illustrate how schemes are built and how neglecting to monitor one’s own problem solving limits students’ growth.
Global News – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jeff Richardson and Harry Pinxteren)
Rounds up international Logo developments, including Sandra Wills’ appointment to lead Logo curriculum innovation at Mowbray College in Australia, the Sunrise School project combining Lego/Logo with museum resources in Melbourne, and the POALL Australian Logo journal. Also details an extensive new version of LCN Logo from the Netherlands that incorporates Scheme-like features such as lambda calculus, a structure editor, and 3D graphics.
ICPSC Sample Problems: Elementary Logo Division – Don Piele and Sharon Yoder
Presents sample problems and worked Logo solutions from the International Computer Problem Solving Contest’s elementary division, covering nested squares, growing triangles, random name selection, and sentence reversal. Provides complete procedure listings and sample runs so teachers can use the problems for classroom practice or contest preparation.

December 1988 (Vol. 7, No. 4)

From the Editor – Hidden Gems – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Yoder reflects on her struggle to identify agates on Oregon beaches as a metaphor for how easily teachers overlook quiet, capable students. She recalls a silent student who turned out to be a hidden gem, using the analogy to urge teachers to look more closely at every student in the classroom.
Monthly Musings – Transitions – Tom Lough
Lough examines different types of transitions, such as one-way versus two-way and transparent versus opaque, drawing on examples like his son’s first crawl and his own introduction to Logo geometry. He closes by announcing his own major transition, leaving to become Curriculum Coordinator for LEGO Systems’ Educational Division.
What Is the International Computer Problem Solving Contest (ICPSC)? – Don Piele
Piele explains the ICPSC in question-and-answer format, describing its five problem categories and its Open and Logo divisions across elementary, junior, and senior age groups. He gives the April 1989 contest date and directs readers to the Compute It! newsletter for further information.
Little Kids and Logo – Simple Gifts – Leslie Thyberg
Thyberg offers a holiday-themed collection of keyboard-familiarity activities for young Logo learners, including a step-by-step lesson plan, the “ERTLE” Bingo-style game, and the “Bug and Debug” card-matching game. She also describes off-computer activities such as Myrtle Says, playing the role of the turtle, and turtle treasure hunts to build directional vocabulary before students reach the keyboard.
Logo Ideas – More Conversions! – Eadie Adamson
Adamson demonstrates how to move pictures between LogoWriter and the new Terrapin Logo PLUS using SAVEPIC, READPICT, SAVEPICT, and LOADPIC, highlighting Logo PLUS’s added text styles, screen-printing sizes, and shape editor. She suggests classroom projects such as storybooks, animated street scenes, highway signs, and map-making that exploit the interchange between the two programs.
LogoLinx – Subprocedure Anti-APPENDectomies – Judi Harris
Harris presents an APPEND tool procedure that automatically records the sequence of subprocedures students invoke in immediate mode, illustrated through a clarinet student’s note-playing procedures, paired with a TITLE tool that turns the recorded list into a reusable named procedure. She surveys further applications, including INSTANT-style single-keystroke microworlds and subject-centered ideas like a rebus maker and a choreography tool.
Developing Creative Writing Projects with Text Files In Terrapin Logo – Mel Levin
Levin explains how to use the Terrapin Logo editor as a text editor with the TEXTEDIT utilities to write and save text files with minimal memory use, then applies the technique to building interactive text adventures. He walks through a template of START, SELECT, and STORY.ENDER procedures that a group of sixth graders used to create a branching story called “The Attic Adventure.”
Logo Connections – Software Drivers: Electronic Glue – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
The Bulls trace Logo’s evolution across platforms and report on the new IBM version of LogoWriter 2.0, including its 256-color capability on PS/2 machines. They introduce the concept of software drivers, showing how GETTOOLS and the .OUT primitive can create portable color tools and device drivers for peripherals, tracing the idea back to Papert’s 1971 concept of a universal controller.
Math Worlds – Logo and Mathematics Education (LME4) at the International Congress of Mathematics Education – Sandy Dawson, editor (Featuring: Joel Hillel and Celia Hoyles)
This report recaps the four strands of the Working Group on Logo and Mathematics Education at the International Congress on Mathematics Education in Budapest, covering Logo in teacher education, Logo and geometry, recursion, and the Logo/mathematics learning environment. It summarizes presentations from researchers including Celia Hoyles, Richard Noss, Uri Leron, and Tom Kieren on topics from transformational geometry to pupils’ mental models of recursion.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – III. Mathematics of Turtle Geometry: Using 360 Degrees – Dan Watt
Watt outlines five developmental levels students pass through in understanding the role of 360 degrees in turtle geometry, from recognizing that rotation times number of sides equals 360 to using state-transparent shape procedures as modules in larger projects. He illustrates each level with annotated examples of real student procedures for polygons, supershapes, a pentacircle, and a castle.
Logo: Search and Research – Research on Teaching Problem Solving – Douglas H. Clements
Clements presents a four-phase, research-based framework for teaching problem solving covering understanding, solving, checking, and extending, detailing specific teacher and student actions for each phase. He also discusses building domain-specific conceptual understanding, modeling problem-solving behavior, encouraging creativity, and addressing students’ unproductive beliefs about mathematics.
Global News – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Kari Hämynen, Hannu Korhonen, and Jose Valente)
This column reports on international Logo activity, describing a Finnish classroom project that used sprite-based “electronic” characters to teach traffic safety, and detailing Logo research initiatives at the University of Campinas’ education laboratory in Brazil, including work with secondary students and with hearing-impaired and physically handicapped children. It closes with contact information for the column’s continental editors across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America.
I Didn’t Teach Spelling Last Week – Bill Craig
Craig describes adapting the LogoWriter CODE and DECODE text-encoding procedures from a programming exercise into a spelling drill tool, walking through progressively more sophisticated versions like CODE2, GENERATE, and RECODE that quiz students on coded vocabulary words. He frames the activity as a way for teachers to integrate Logo with curriculum requirements such as spelling rather than treating the two as competing uses of instructional time.

JANUARY 1989 (Vol. 7, No. 5)

From the Editor – What NeXt? – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on Steve Jobs’s new NeXT computer and uses its introduction as a launching point to look back at the evolution of microcomputers and Logo since the late 1970s. She questions whether future, more powerful machines will preserve a discovery-based Logo culture or reduce computers to mere productivity and drill tools, urging Logo users to pass on their vision to others.
Monthly Musings – Interfaces: Transition Zones – Tom Lough
Tom Lough explores the concept of an interface as a boundary between two states, drawing on examples from childhood memory, photography, fractals, and the natural world to show that such boundaries are rarely sharp or clearly defined. He extends the idea to the classroom and to Logo itself as an interface between students and computers, and closes by reflecting on the New Year as a boundary his family marks with reflection and goal-setting.
Logo Ideas – An Adventure – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson opens a new series on LogoWriter’s text-processing side by describing how to plan and write branching, choose-your-own-adventure stories with students. She details classroom preparation steps, story-tree diagramming, and specific LogoWriter procedures such as GETPAGE, STARTUP, and PICK for linking pages and creating random or weighted branching.
Stager’s Stuff – The Stuff We Did Last Summer – Gary Stager
Gary Stager recounts his experiences at the fifth annual Logo Institute at Lesley College, comparing its collaborative culture to Seymour Papert’s description of the Brazilian samba school in Mindstorms. He describes the daily schedule of sessions and mini-courses, the camaraderie among participants and faculty, and the closing Logo Institute Conference where projects and ideas are shared.
Conversations With Logo (Part 1) – overheard by Michael Tempel
In an imagined dialogue between a person and LogoWriter itself, the piece walks through why commands like SETPOS reject bracketed random expressions and unevaluated variable names. The exchange builds up to writing a working SETXY procedure using LIST, while explaining Logo’s rules about evaluating words inside brackets versus outside them.
LogoLinx – Twice Upon a Time – Judi Harris
Judi Harris uses comedian Victor Borge’s routine of inflating number-homophones in speech as the basis for a Logo wordplay activity. She presents procedures such as PREINFLATION, POSTINFLATION, INFLATE, and INFLATED that let students transform text into “inflated” versions, illustrated with a retold fairy tale.
Logo Connections – Leaping to Conclusions with Spreadsheets – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Glen Bull and Gina Bull compare problem-solving approaches in Logo and spreadsheets by working through the task of calculating a child’s age from a birth date. They demonstrate how breaking the problem into smaller procedures, such as borrowing months, makes an initially complex calculation manageable in both Logo and spreadsheet formulas.
Math Worlds – Logo in Mathematics Education: What to do with It – Ihor Charischak, CLIME (Featuring: Mary Waters Schofield)
Ihor Charischak shares a letter from a CLIME member seeking Logo activities tied to specific K-8 math concepts, and responds by proposing that CLIME become a clearinghouse for math microworlds contributed by teachers. He illustrates the idea with a detailed “Fraction Arcade” microworld in which students debug a malfunctioning adding machine that fails to find common denominators before summing fractions.
The Recursive Dragon – Thomas Bannon
Thomas Bannon argues that recursion is one of Logo’s most powerful yet under-taught ideas and presents the dragon curve as an engaging alternative to standard recursion examples like factorials or Fibonacci numbers. He explains the curve’s recursive definition and provides a full Logo listing for drawing dragons of arbitrary order, along with a walkthrough of how the recursive calls unfold.
Little Kids and Logo – Turtle Tool Kits: The Tricks are in the Bag – Leslie Thyberg
Leslie Thyberg shares a set of simple custom Logo utilities designed to help young children work with Logo more easily, including shortcuts for drawing, movement, and compass-direction commands. She also describes techniques for slowing down turtle movement and introduces the POLYSPI microworld and other tools for helping children control the turtle.
Assessing Logo Learning In Classrooms – Mathematics of Turtle Geometry: Using Mathematical Thinking – Dan Watt
Dan Watt continues his research-based series on critical aspects of Logo learning by examining how students use mathematical strategies such as combining steps, inverses, symmetry, similarity, and transformational geometry in their turtle graphics projects. He illustrates each strategy with annotated student examples, showing both successful applications and cases, like Kathy’s house, where a lack of mathematical reasoning led to errors.
Logo: Search and Research – Research on Logo and Problem Solving – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas H. Clements surveys quantitative and qualitative research on whether Logo programming improves general problem-solving ability, finding decidedly mixed results across numerous studies. He balances this with qualitative anecdotes suggesting real transfer of procedural thinking to non-Logo contexts, and offers teaching recommendations for helping students generalize problem-solving skills learned through Logo.
Global News – edited by Dennis Harper (Featuring: Ua da Cruz Fagundes)
Dennis Harper’s column reports on Seye Sylla’s new UNESCO position in Senegal, announces the upcoming “Logo in Paradise” workshop in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and features a detailed report from Ua da Cruz Fagundes on the wide-ranging Logo research projects underway at the Cognitive Studies Laboratory (LEC) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The LEC report describes Piagetian-based studies spanning literacy, language arts, mathematics, physics, art and music education, and work with children with disabilities.

FEBRUARY 1989 (Vol. 7, No. 6)

From the Editor: Desktop Publishing for Kids? – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Reflects on her own lifelong struggle with writing and how desktop publishing tools like PageMaker and Logo Writer transformed her relationship to composing text. Argues that Logo’s ability to mix graphics and text makes it a powerful productivity tool comparable to desktop publishing software, not just a programming language for teaching problem solving.
Monthly Musings: I ♥ Logo – Tom Lough
Shares readers’ responses to an earlier call asking teachers and students to name their favorite Logo command and explain why. Compiles dozens of testimonials praising commands like FORWARD, REPEAT, and RIGHT and LEFT, revealing the personal and pedagogical reasons students and teachers feel affection for Logo.
Logo Hearts: A Project for Young and Old – Judith Enz Clauss
Describes a Valentine’s-season project in which second graders and later in-service teachers used a basic HEART procedure to draw hearts of varying sizes and explore turtle orientation. Details the classroom discoveries about angles, symmetry, and arcs that emerged, and provides Logo code for several heart-drawing procedures along with worksheet extension activities.
About the Cover – Uncredited
Explains that the heart designs on this issue’s cover were produced using the HEART, HEART.B, and related procedures from Judith Enz Clauss’s Logo Hearts Project article. Notes that the flower-like design came from HEART.B while the other three designs used HEART.1, HEART.2, and HEART.3 from the accompanying Copy Me worksheet.
Little Kids and Logo: Turtles in Space – An Out of This World Microworld – Leslie Thyberg
Recounts leading workshops at a skeptical primary school and responds to doubts about Logo’s value for young children by outlining its developmental benefits. Presents a space-themed microworld built around the IDEAL problem-solving model, combining writing, art, and Logo graphics activities organized around an imagined space mission.
Logo Ideas: Search and Replace – More on Text – Eadie Adamson
Explores LogoWriter’s word-processing primitives REPLACE, SEARCH, CUT, INSERT, SOL, and CU, showing how young writers can correct spelling using a simple FIX procedure. Demonstrates using SEARCH and INSERT together to build a Logo Sing Along that highlights song lyrics in sync with music.
LogoLinx: Parallel Inconsistencies – Judi Harris
Introduces oxymorons as a source of vocabulary and word-study fun, using Logo’s PICK primitive to randomly generate combinations like jumbo shrimp from programmed word lists. Extends the idea to geographic oxymorons, listing real United States towns whose names contradict their locations, such as Rome, Georgia and Paris, Texas.
Logo PLUS: A New Version of Logo Worth Looking At – Eadie Adamson
Reviews Terrapin’s new ProDOS-based Logo PLUS for 128K Apple computers, describing its shape editor, graphics-screen text styles, and bundled accessories like a disk formatter and font editor. Evaluates its strengths, such as animation and black-and-white text display, alongside weaknesses like unreliable colored text rendering.
Logo Connections: StarNet – A Fourth-Generation Computing Environment – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Traces the personal history of computing tools from early standalone microcomputers through networked systems, framing Logo’s evolution alongside changes in hardware and software environments. Introduces TERC’s StarNet pilot project, which links classrooms with a shared suite of computing tools including LogoWriter, to illustrate the emerging fourth generation of networked computing.
MathWorlds: Easy as 1 1 2 2 3 – Michael Tempel (Featuring: edited by Sandy Dawson)
Investigates mathematician John Conway’s self-referential number sequence, in which each new term is generated by counting backward and forward through the list, and its surprising convergence toward a ratio of one half. Presents Logo procedures written to generate and graph the sequence, illustrating how programming can be used to explore an open mathematical question.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – V. Strategies for Learning Through Exploration – Dan Watt
Continues a research series on critical aspects of Logo learning by examining strategies for learning through exploration, using the case of a fourth grader named Brad. Illustrates seven exploratory strategies, including keeping records, testing hypotheses, and generalizing from examples, through Brad’s and other students’ actual Logo projects.
A Logo Writer Tip – Jandy Bird
Offers a practical procedure for locking multiple LogoWriter pages across an entire set of lab disks at once, rather than locking each page individually. Explains how to build and use a CORRECT procedure with GETTOOLS to automate transferring locked sample pages to student disks.
Terrapin Logo on the GS – Uncredited (reprinted from the Terrapin Times)
Provides practical tips for running Terrapin Logo on the Apple IIGS, covering how to access the Control Panel without losing procedures and the correct baud and slot settings for printing. Notes that removing the graphics screen border and setting system speed to normal are necessary for full-screen drawing and for running the music tools on the Utilities Disk.
Logo: Search and Research – The Nature of the Problem – Douglas H. Clements
Examines the metacognitive process of deciding on the nature of a problem, using classroom dialogue and research findings to argue that Logo programming helps students develop this skill more than CAI or non-computer environments. Offers concrete teaching strategies, including student-designed projects and homunculi characters, for helping students learn to define problems before solving them.
Global News – Dennis Harper
Reports on international Logo activity gathered from correspondents, including a call for participation in Belgium’s EUROLOGO 89 conference, a robot-turtle video from Australia, Chinese-language Logo software in Shanghai, and the state of Logo education in Ireland and Bulgaria. Gathers brief updates and contact information from Logo educators across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America.
The Logo Community in the Northwest Part of Brazil – Paulo Gileno Cysneiros
Describes the EDUCOM project at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, which has used Logo since 1985 to conduct research and train teachers in a city marked by stark social inequality. Reviews several studies examining Logo’s effect on students’ understanding of angles and force, and describes ongoing efforts to develop Logo teaching materials for Brazilian schools.

MARCH 1989 (Vol. 7, No. 7)

From the Editor – If It’s January Then It Must Be March – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Editor Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on Logo Exchange’s first year under ICCE and announces plans for three themed issues covering beginners, Logo Connections, and advanced Logo use. She lists submission deadlines for the coming year and invites readers to contribute articles and classroom experiences.
Monthly Musings – Part Two: The Beat Goes On – Tom Lough
Tom Lough continues his survey of favorite Logo commands, presenting additional responses from students at Holy Trinity School in Pittsburgh explaining why they love commands like RANDOM, PENERASE, CLEARSCREEN, and EDIT. He closes with a note about a new book by Horacio Reggini exploring future roles of computers in education.
Logo Ideas – Part One: Text and Logo Writer: It’s Not the Same Old Story – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson explores using Logo Writer’s PRINT and INSERT commands, combined with WAIT and recursive procedures, to control how text from students’ stories appears on screen, mimicking typing, speech pacing, and dramatic timing. She shares a classroom project in which students loaded their word-processed stories into Logo Writer and experimented with letter-by-letter text displays, including one student’s addition of keystroke sounds.
Stager’s Stuff – LEGO TC Logo Ballet: The Baryshnikov of Bricks – Gary Stager
Gary Stager describes the LEGO Ballet project, in which students build a LEGO TC Logo ballerina and use a CHOREOGRAPH programming shell to teach it dance steps through single keystrokes. He provides the full set of tool procedures, including TEACH, LEARN, NAME.DANCE, and UNDO, and explains how the activity combines sequencing, music, and robotics into a syntonic microworld.
Creating Moving Clock Hands – Diane Miller
Diane Miller recounts how her students designed Logo procedures to animate the moving hands of a watch face, discovering the principles of frame-based animation and building a hierarchical set of SECHAND, MINHAND, and HOURHAND procedures. She details the class’s process of debugging a persistent erasure glitch caused by mismatched line lengths between the second and minute hands.
Little Kids and Logo – Beware the Ide(a)s of March! – Leslie Thyberg
Leslie Thyberg describes building a shape utility toolbox of Logo procedures that lets young students experiment freely, inspired by Ed Emberley’s animal drawing book. She shows how simple shapes, the DOT command, and the STAMP primitive can be combined to create a classroom carnival of Logo animals tied to an integrated arts and science curriculum.
LogoLinx – Turtle Archetypes – Judi Harris
Judi Harris traces the turtle as a cross-cultural symbol, surveying its mythological meanings in Chinese, Japanese, African, Indian, Greco-Roman, and Native American traditions. She connects this rich symbolic history to the Logo turtle’s role as a powerful object to think with in students’ microworlds.
Correction – Uncredited
This brief notice corrects an error in Michael Tempel’s Conversations with Logo article from the January issue, clarifying that the second Person line should read setxy 60 80. It credits Dorothy Fitch for catching the mistake before readers puzzled over it themselves.
Logo Connections – Is This Procedure Defined? – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull tackle the challenges of converting classic INSTANT-style keystroke procedures from traditional Logo dialects into Logo Writer, which lacks a DEFINEDP primitive. They present workaround procedures, including COMMAND? and DEFINE, that let teachers replicate the missing functionality despite Logo Writer’s limitations.
Math Worlds – A Turtle View on Geometrical Transformations (and Vice Versa) – Uri Leron and Rina Zazkis (Edited by A. J. (Sandy) Dawson)
Uri Leron and Rina Zazkis use the characters Felix and Kevin to explore the precise mathematical correspondence between turtle operations like FORWARD and RIGHT and Euclidean plane transformations such as translation, rotation, and reflection. They introduce a new FLIP operation to complete the correspondence and outline the group-theoretic framework underlying turtle and Euclidean geometry.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – VI. Debugging Strategies – Dan Watt
Dan Watt continues his research-based column on critical aspects of Logo learning by focusing on debugging strategies, outlining steps for identifying, locating, fixing, and even incorporating bugs into a finished project. He illustrates these strategies with classroom examples, including Kathy’s lopsided window, Douglas’s PENTACIRCLE procedure, and Martha and Vinh’s accidentally rippled flag.
Search and Research – Planning a Strategy – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas H. Clements reviews research on whether Logo programming helps students develop planning skills and whether those skills transfer to non-Logo problem-solving tasks. He concludes that such transfer requires deliberate teaching strategies and offers classroom questions and techniques for explicitly promoting planning.
A Tip for Using Random – Stan and Linda Burech
Stan and Linda Burech share a Logo procedure called RANDOMSEED that generates a different starting seed for the RANDOM command each time a program runs, using the variability of human reaction time to a keypress. They provide the full WAITKEY and SEED procedures needed to implement this trick in classroom programs.
Global News – Edited by Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper’s Global News column reports on Logo’s expansion into Japanese primary and secondary schools, Bulgaria’s Mathematical Laboratory in Logo at Sofia University, and Argentina’s active Logo education community under Horacio Reggini. It features an excerpt from Rosa Kaufman’s Pirate Logan’s Maps activity, a turtle geometry worksheet for young students.

April 1989 (Vol. 7, No. 8)

From the Editor – Reflections and Impressions – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Sharon Burrowes Yoder reflects on her experience at the West Coast Hands On Technology Conference, describing reunions with Logo colleagues, new products like LogoPLUS and Lego/Logo, and a keynote contrast between Tom Snyder’s classroom realism and Seymour Papert’s vision of constructionism. She also shares a letter from Ken Johnson of the British Logo User Group describing a new book of secondary-school Logo activities tied to England’s National Curriculum.
Monthly Musings – Assembly and the Salad Bar – Tom Lough
Tom Lough uses the metaphor of building a salad bar to explore how individual procedures can be assembled into superprocedures, recalling how he first grasped this idea while learning Logo from Glen Bull and Steve Tipps at the University of Virginia. He closes with a challenge inviting readers to construct a HOUSE procedure using only classic SQUARE and TRIANGLE subprocedures.
Logo Ideas – Putting the Reader in Control – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson continues her series on programming interactive text stories in LogoWriter, showing procedures like MESSAGE, IGNORE, and WHEN-based key controls that let readers pace themselves through screens and pages, plus techniques for animated title pages such as Matthew’s sliding SKY JUMP title. She also addresses a memory slowdown caused by the INS command and offers a CLEAR procedure that periodically clears text to keep letter-by-letter printing fast.
Stager’s Stuff – The Magic Circle Microworld – Gary Stager
Gary Stager presents a turtle graphics microworld built around three CIRCLE procedures that let students discover the relationships among circumference, diameter, radius, and pi by drawing congruent circles from different inputs. He extends the activity with a MAGIC procedure that generates a mystery circle and a MEASURE procedure that uses Logo’s collision detection to have the turtle calculate the diameter itself.
“Mr. Logical” is Logo Winner – Donald T. Piele
Donald T. Piele reports that Matthew Frank of Mirman School won the 1988 Junior Logo Division of the International Computer Problem Solving Contest, profiling his programming background and the criteria, such as modularity and meaningful procedure names, that determined the rankings. The article also lists the top four teams and announces dates for the 1989 contest.
LogoLinX – Multiplication Clouds Have Turtled Linings – Judi Harris
Judi Harris shows how connecting the ones’-place digits of multiplication tables around a turtle-drawn circle produces distinctive geometric patterns, such as a decagon for the nines table, that make the facts easier to remember. She provides a full set of Logo procedures, including PLACE0 through PLACE9, DRAW, and DESIGN, that let students type in any digit sequence and have the turtle render the corresponding pattern.
About the Cover – Uncredited
This short note explains that the issue’s cover art was drawn by sixth grader Cory Dahlquist in Karen Thimmesch’s class at Galtier Magnet School in St. Paul, as part of a master-procedure project combining squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles into a human or animal figure. Computer teacher Paul Krocheski notes that the project helped students better understand how subprocedures work together within a master program.
Logo Connections – A Text Instant – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull describe how to build a Single-Key “Text Instant” in LogoWriter that lets a child move the cursor around the text screen with arrow keys and press the space bar to check whether the word under the cursor contains a target letter. They walk through the supporting procedures, including Move.Cursor, CursUnder, Clip, and CursorWord, that combine into the final Instant and Command.List procedures.
Little Kids and Logo – Leslie Thyberg
Leslie Thyberg presents a set of off-computer activities for young Logo learners, including a “Myrtle Says” directionality game, tactile turtle-making crafts, and classroom management systems like turtle-group sign-up charts and student Logo Logs. She closes with Terrapin Logo procedures for running a classroom “Academy Awards” slideshow of students’ saved pictures.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – Planning, Carrying Out and Completing a Logo Project – Dan Watt
Dan Watt continues his series on assessing Logo learning by describing the phases of the Logo programming process, from brainstorming through publication, and illustrating them with a detailed case study of two sixth graders’ Statue of Liberty project. He shows how the students abandoned their original turtle-graphics plan midway through in favor of a coordinate-based SETXY approach after learning it from their teacher, ultimately completing and publishing the project.
Search and Research – Planning for Planning – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas H. Clements examines why students abandon their Logo plans and offers a structured planning strategy, moving from a creative drawing through a measured planning drawing to typing and debugging code. He also outlines a research-based sequence of prompts, hints, and giveaways teachers can use, in that order, to help students who get stuck without giving away the solution too quickly.
Object-Oriented Programming: Initial Experiences – Robs Muir
Robs Muir introduces object-oriented programming concepts such as inheritance and shadowing using Coral Software’s Object Logo for the Macintosh, illustrating objects like a wavy-lined turtle called WAVER that other objects can inherit behavior from. He describes a four-step teaching sequence used at Claremont High School, adapted from Gary Drescher’s OOP pedagogy outline, for gradually introducing students to predefined objects, instances, and customization.
Global News – Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper opens his international news column with a personal story about spending three days cataloging and discarding over 1,200 mildewed floppy disks with his son, whose HyperCard-based inventory system was built using skills learned from Logo. He then introduces a transcript from a Soviet-sponsored education conference in Tallinn, Estonia.
AI Languages in School Mathematics – Hannu Korhonen (Featured in Dennis Harper’s Global News)
Hannu Korhonen, in a talk delivered at a Computers in Education conference in Tallinn, Estonia, argues that Logo’s simple syntax makes it a good entry-level language for teaching school mathematics through doing rather than reading, comparing it to APL and PROLOG. He discusses data abstraction, naming mathematical objects in a student’s own language, functional programming with examples like Fibonacci numbers, and the idea of building open geometric or numeric microworlds for exploration.

MAY 1989 (Vol. 7, No. 9)

From the Editor – But I Can’t Write! – Sharon Burrowes Yoder
Yoder reflects on the close of the Logo Exchange publishing year and appeals directly to teachers who doubt their writing ability to contribute cover art, letters, local news, and articles for the coming year. She reassures reluctant contributors that heavy editorial support will shape their submissions into publishable pieces, and previews the 1989-90 theme issues of Just for Beginners, Logo Connections, and Extra for Experts.
Monthly Musings – Turtle Wordle World – Tom Lough
Lough explores Logo’s word-manipulation potential by revisiting Cathy Frank’s “wordle” concept and Glen Bull and Paula Cochran’s Hawaiian word tools, then launches an international project inviting readers to submit the word “turtle” in as many languages as possible. He suggests the resulting Turtle Dictionary could support geography, statistics, music, and pen-pal activities across classrooms worldwide.
Logo Ideas – Hypertext in Logo Writer – Eadie Adamson
Adamson traces the history of hypertext from Vannevar Bush’s 1945 “memex” concept through Mark Guzdial’s REFTOOL and Milorad Pavic’s novel The Dictionary of the Khazars, then explains how Logo Writer’s SELECT, CUT, COPY, and PASTE commands can be combined into a working hypertext tool for students. She details a STARTUP-driven READ program that lets readers navigate capitalized reference words between pages and describes a scrapbook disk of sample projects available from her and Michael Tempel.
Logo II Tools for ProDOS – Disk Management – Michael Muir
Muir presents short Logo II ProDOS procedures, including UPDATE, SETDISK, and SETDRIVE, that automate erasing and resaving files and setting the disk prefix so users no longer need to remember disk volume names. He explains how each procedure uses SETPREFIX and the ONLINE reporter, and suggests burying them in a startup file so they behave like built-in primitives.
Little Kids and Logo – Mud, Marvelous Mud! – Leslie F. Thyberg
Thyberg recounts a parent-child art class built around West African and Southwest Asian mud architecture and connects the tactile, constructive spirit of mud-building to Seymour Papert’s essay “The Computer as Mud Pie” and to Logo learning. She proposes classroom extensions such as shape hunts, city-planning projects, and cross-cultural comparisons between mud houses, Inuit igloos, and Southwest pueblo dwellings as springboards for Logo-based social studies units.
Logo Quilts: A Different Approach – Judy Zeiter
Zeiter describes an integrated fourth-grade project at the Greenhill School in which students used Logo variables to design pattern-block quilt shapes that were then colored, transferred to fabric, and hand-quilted in art class as part of a Pioneer Week unit. She outlines the design constraints teachers imposed, such as size limits and partner-based variation requirements, and reports that the collaboration strengthened students’ grasp of variables while linking computing, art, and history.
LogoLinX – Metaphysical LinX – Judi Harris
Harris frames a playful allegory in which “Consciousness” writes Logo procedures such as PERCEIVE, MANIFEST, and REALIZE to model spiritual awakening, ultimately arriving at a recursive definition of realization. She then connects this parable to Seymour Papert’s construction-versus-instruction distinction and Willis Harman’s Global Mind Change, suggesting that Logo’s recursive structures metaphorically mirror a larger shift toward consciousness-centered ways of understanding reality.
Teaching Commands with a Cardboard Computer – James H. Wiebe and Malorie L. Wiebe
The Wiebes present a hands-on physical model, a cardboard box fitted with card slots representing workspace, screenspace, and diskspace, for teaching elementary students the otherwise abstract concepts of Logo memory and file management. They provide step-by-step classroom activities pairing the cardboard model with real-computer commands like POTS, SAVE, and CATALOG to help students distinguish what is displayed, stored in memory, and saved to disk.
Logo Connections – Say WHEN! – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
The Bulls explain how Logo Writer’s WHEN command lets students program keyboard interrupts, demonstrating the concept by building a racing rabbit that changes shape and can be trapped beneath a falling cage. They walk through the full set of procedures, including Set.Keys, Drop.Cage, and STARTUP, and suggest using the resulting game to introduce algebraic inequalities.
Letter to the Editor – Uri Leron and Tami Lapidot
Responding to an earlier editorial on Logo beyond elementary school, Leron and Lapidot describe a nationally commissioned Israeli high school course, “Introduction to Computer Science via Logo,” being piloted in twenty classes at the Technion’s Logo Centre. They discuss the course’s human-centered approach to computer science concepts like abstraction and recursion, and reflect on the challenges of teacher preparation and overcoming bias against Logo as a language “for babies.”
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching – Joanne Rankin
Rankin describes a fourth-grade Hennigan School project that combined the novel The Book of Three, a science unit on sound, and Logo Writer to let students depict characters, compose ballads, and assign musical tones to syllables. The finished programs synchronized character drawings with sung lyrics, integrating reading, language arts, science, and music through modular Logo programming.
Math Worlds – The Council for Logo in Mathematics Education…An Update – Ihor Charischak
Charischak reports on CLIME’s new official affiliation with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and previews the organization’s forthcoming issue on math microworlds, offering a working definition and checklist of “microworldly” characteristics illustrated by the classic POLYSPI procedure. He surveys new commercial microworlds from Terrapin and Logo Computer Systems alongside CLIME member-created microworlds like Graphing, Logo Pattern Block Fractions, and Quarts, and explains how readers can obtain the CLIME microworlds disk.
Assessing Logo Learning in Classrooms – Managing Workspace and Files – Dan Watt
In the final installment of his nine-part series on critical aspects of Logo learning, Watt argues that workspace and file management, though intellectually unglamorous, has real negative consequences when neglected, illustrating this with two “sad stories” of teachers who never taught printing or file organization. He outlines developmental stages students pass through, from saving everything in one undifferentiated file to using sequential names and commands like POTS and CATALOG, and explains why teachers often fail to teach these skills.
Search and Research – Representing and Monitoring – Douglas H. Clements
Clements examines two problem-solving metacomponents, building representations and monitoring solution processes, and discusses how Logo programming can help students link diagrams, verbal descriptions, and code while also developing self-monitoring and debugging habits. He presents Carver and Klahr’s formal debugging model and offers concrete teacher questions and strategies for helping students generalize monitoring skills beyond the computer.
Global News – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Pedro Fernando Cuadros Marin)
Harper’s column presents a report from the Institute for the Blind and Deaf in Cali, Colombia, describing a Logo-based educational program for deaf and blind children aimed at building logical reasoning and visuo-motor skills. The report details evaluation results showing improved visuo-motor coordination in deaf children and greater patience and debugging engagement among blind children, despite challenges with typing, laterality, and organization.

Volume 8 (1989–1990)

September 1989 (Vol. 8, No. 1)

From the Editor – Welcome Back! – Sharon Yoder
Editor Sharon Yoder welcomes readers back for a new volume, describing the ISTE/ICCE merger that created the new International Society for Technology in Education and introducing two new columnists, Dorothy Fitch and Eric Brown. She also calls on readers to submit articles, artwork, and classroom project descriptions to help fill the pages of Logo Exchange this year.
Monthly Musings – FD Ever FD – Tom Lough
Tom Lough reflects on the meaning of Logo’s FORWARD command as a metaphor for teaching and learning, inspired by a friend’s license plate reading “FD :AMT”. He explores how varying inputs to FD, from small incremental steps to negative numbers to huge wraparound values, mirror the varied pace of progress teachers and students experience in the classroom.
Logo Ideas – Map Making: Many Variations on a Simple Theme – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson presents a simple keystroke-based turtle drawing program that students can extend themselves, and describes how her third graders use it to create imaginary state maps as part of a geography unit. She offers numerous extensions, including color-changing keys, flashing labeled signs, a HELP procedure, and converting the drawing program into a maze-driving program.
Embedded Recursion and Russian Dolls – Jessica Kahn
Jessica Kahn describes using nested Russian “matrushka” dolls as a physical analogy to help teacher-education students grasp embedded recursion, contrasting it with the more familiar tail recursion. She walks through the SHAPE and PRINT.WORD procedures alongside the doll demonstration to show how control returns through each level once the recursive base case is reached.
Beginner’s Corner – Little Boxes… – Dorothy Fitch
In her debut Beginner’s Corner column, Dorothy Fitch introduces a set of single-letter Logo procedures that let novices draw and erase squares with minimal typing. She offers six classroom activities built on these tools, covering pattern-making, connecting shapes, block-letter words, factors and multiplication, word puzzles, and filling squares with color.
LogoLinX – Mathematical Magic on the Turtle’s BK – Judi Harris
Judi Harris traces the ancient Chinese origin of the magic square and shows how to build a Logo tool that draws a magic square grid and automatically tallies row, column, and diagonal sums as students place digits. She provides sample digit lists for classroom puzzle-solving and challenges readers to streamline her nine near-duplicate cell procedures into something more efficient.
Logo & Company – Logo by Any Other Name… – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Glen and Gina Bull rename their long-running column to “Logo & Company” to reflect a broadened focus on “Logo-like” software such as paint programs, hypermedia, and multimedia tools that share Logo’s learner-centered philosophy. They announce a reader contest to coin a term for this class of software and preview an upcoming special issue on Logo Connections.
Math Worlds – Two Turtles in a Hot Tub – Sandy Dawson, editor (Featuring: David Pimm and Tom Kieren)
Editor Sandy Dawson presents the first installment of a transcribed hot-tub conversation between David Pimm and Tom Kieren debating whether and how mathematics is genuinely learned through Logo programming. The two researchers examine studies on transformation geometry and proportionality and debate whether tasks themselves can be said to “teach” or whether the human teacher’s role of gentle “nudging” is essential.
Order From Chaos – Phil Firsenbaum
Inspired by a television segment on chaos theory, Phil Firsenbaum shares a Logo Writer procedure that plots points using random die rolls toward the vertices of a triangle to generate a fractal-like pattern. He describes how his eighth-grade students extended the experiment with different shapes, rotated figures, and a larger version using the WINDOW command.
Report on the LME4 Conference – Uri Leron
Uri Leron reports on the Fourth International Conference for Logo and Mathematics Education, held in Jerusalem and organized by the Israeli Logo Centre, listing the researchers and projects represented. He details the conference proceedings’ working groups, joint MIT Media Lab presentations, paper sessions, and plenary talks, and explains how readers can order the proceedings.
A Logo Challenge for Two – Ken Johnson (and friends)
Editor Sharon Yoder relays a telecommunications-based Logo programming challenge originally posed by Ken Johnson over the “Logo Friends” network, involving a program called BACKWARDS that reverses a procedure’s command order. Responses from Ron Brasington and Petur Thorsteinsson provide alternate implementations, and Thorsteinsson poses a follow-up challenge to write a procedure that reverses a graphical procedure’s visual effect.
Adding a Set of Alternative Conditional Primitives to Logo Writer – Charles E. Crume & Cleborne D. Maddux
Charles Crume and Cleborne Maddux present TEST, IFTRUE, and IFFALSE tool procedures that bring conditional syntax familiar from other Logo dialects into Logo Writer, which natively offers only IF and IFELSE. They explain how to load the procedures with GETTOOLS and provide full code along with error-trapping details and a worked example combining AND and OR.
Search and Research – Learning and Teaching Logo Problem Solving: A Review – Douglas H. Clements
In his final column of a yearlong series on Logo problem-solving research, Douglas Clements reviews a meta-analysis by Liao and Bright showing a moderate positive effect of computer programming on problem-solving scores, with Logo programming showing stronger effects than other languages. He then synthesizes the year’s findings into a list of teaching practices, such as prompting metacognition and encouraging transfer, that consistently characterized successful Logo learning environments.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor
Editor Dennis Harper reports on international Logo activity gathered during his travels to Bulgaria and a UNESCO workshop in Varna, then focuses on a three-week Logo camp held in Thies, Senegal, and a broader national project to introduce computers into Senegalese schools. He also describes LOGAME, a Logo-based educational game developed in Leningrad, USSR, that lets students debug algorithms to guide a character named Flappy through obstacles.

October 1989 (Vol. 8, No. 2)

On Beginning – Sharon Yoder
Reflects on what it feels like to be a beginner learning something entirely new, drawing on the author’s own return to graduate school to argue that teachers should periodically put themselves in a student’s position. Urges educators to use their own experiences of frustration and mastery to become more sensitive to the struggles of students who are just starting out with Logo.
Upstart Startup – Tom Lough
Explains the STARTUP variable and file used in early Logo versions to run procedures automatically when a workspace loads, then uses the idea as a frame for offering advice to new Logo teachers. Compiles a set of “startup” tips gathered from experienced Logo educators at a University of the Virgin Islands course, ranging from keeping a learning journal to involving students from day one.
You’ve Got LEGO® TC Logo. How Do You Begin? Try Traffic! – Eadie Adamson
Describes beginning a LEGO TC Logo unit with a traffic-light building project because its simple construction lets students reach the computer interface quickly. Details programming the lights with recursive procedures, taking students on a field trip to time real intersections, and adding flashing WALK and DON’T WALK signs with the label command.
The Turtle as Car – Diane Miller
Recounts how a third grader’s wish to animate a fast car led him to discover that moving the turtle itself along a drawn road worked better than redrawing a car sprite. Traces his progression from a basic REPEAT loop to a procedure with a SPEED input and finally a recursive version, showing how the project introduced variables and recursion.
It’s as Easy as ABC – Dorothy Fitch
Presents letters and numbers as an alternative to squares and triangles for practicing the FORWARD, BACK, RIGHT, and LEFT commands, walking through the steps of writing a procedure to draw the letter A. Shows how repeating and rotating that single letter procedure can generate more elaborate geometric designs.
Two Turtles in a Hot Tub: Part Two – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson, editor (Featuring: Tom Kieren and David Pimm)
Continues a transcribed hot-tub conversation between mathematics educators Tom Kieren and David Pimm about how Logo’s imperative, action-based language shapes children’s thinking. Debates whether Logo’s close tie between language and action helps or hinders students’ eventual development of formal mathematical proof.
Dot-to-Dot LinX – Judi Harris and Sue Eskridge
Presents a DOT procedure for building dot-to-dot puzzles on Cartesian coordinates that students can label and save for classmates to solve by connecting the points with the turtle. Also suggests a low-tech variation using transparency overlays taped over the monitor so students can trace pre-drawn dot puzzles.
Multimedia for Beginners – Glen Bull, Gina Bull, Paula Cochran, and Chris Appert
Explains how teachers can combine Logo with ordinary VCR equipment by tracing paused video images or printed illustrations onto transparencies and transferring them into Logo or a paint program. Details the difference between composite and RGB monitors and how to wire a VCR into a composite monitor to capture and trace video frames.
What’s Hard About Beginning With Logo? The Research – Douglas H. Clements
Surveys research on the “interpretation” and “egocentric” bugs beginners display when learning turtle commands like RIGHT and LEFT, tracing them to everyday language and egocentric spatial reasoning. Presents a framework organizing turtle commands into state and position categories and argues that teacher questioning, rather than direct instruction, helps children build a correct understanding of turtle geometry.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Fernanda M. F. Barrella, Joo Filipe Matos, and Eduardo Veloso)
Reports on the Fourth International Logo Congress in Santiago, Chile, featuring talks by Seymour Papert and Steve Ocko and dozens of papers on Logo in elementary and special education. Also describes Portugal’s MINERVA Project, a national initiative since 1985 that has brought Logo and other computer applications into dozens of primary and secondary schools.

November 1989 (Vol. 8, No. 3)

From the Editor – Logo: Programming Language or Application – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on a New Zealand conference where LogoWriter and Logo PLUS struck attendees as more application than programming language, prompting a discussion of how boundaries between programming languages and applications are blurring. She argues this shift need not threaten Logo’s core philosophy of exploration and discovery, since users who begin with Logo as a tool often grow into programming within its extensible environment.
Monthly Musings – The RT Stuff – Tom Lough
Tom Lough revisits an old newsletter filler line about direction mattering more than distance, using the RT and LT turtle commands as a metaphor for how small “directional” moments in teaching can profoundly affect students’ attitudes and futures. He shares imagined student reflections to illustrate how a teacher’s encouragement can shape a student’s life trajectory as much as content mastery does.
Logo Ideas – The Subject Is Poetry – Eadie Adamson (Featuring: Robert MacDonald)
Eadie Adamson profiles fourth-grade teacher Robert MacDonald’s project having students write accumulative-rhyme poems by hand before typing them into a recursive LogoWriter list-processing program that prints each stanza. The column walks through MacDonald’s classroom process step by step and includes the poetry program’s code along with suggestions for adapting the activity to other holiday themes.
Customizing Logo With a Startup File – Diane Miller
Diane Miller explains how to build a STARTUP file so custom tool procedures, such as abbreviations and circle- and arc-drawing routines, load automatically and can be buried so they behave like built-in primitives. She provides step-by-step instructions for creating, modifying, and copying startup files across disks along with sample procedures for circles, arcs, and command abbreviations.
Beginner’s Corner – A Logo Melody – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch shows how to translate the round “Dona Nobis Pacem” into Logo music procedures using the NOTE command, breaking the song into phrase-based subprocedures for pitch and duration. She includes a “Copy Me” page of musical clues for students and lists the syntax adjustments needed for Terrapin, PC Logo, and LogoWriter versions.
LogoLinX – Alphabet Adventures – Judi Harris
Judi Harris presents a set of LogoWriter tool procedures that generate “alphabit” word games, letting students form and verify subwords from long vocabulary words while the computer checks spelling against the source letters. The column includes a sample play session and explains how the procedures track user progress and store answer lists in separate text files.
Survey and Graphing Tools – Bill Craig
Bill Craig describes a workaround for LogoWriter’s failure to save variable contents on a page by writing procedures that convert survey questions and answers into savable procedure definitions. He shares the complete set of START, VOTE, and RESULTS procedures that let a class build a poll one day and administer and tally it later, feeding results into existing graphing tools.
Logo & Company – Hypermedia Castle – Glen Bull, Gina Bull
Glen and Gina Bull demonstrate how to build a hypermedia application in LogoWriter by mapping an invisible grid over a castle drawing and using GETPAGE to jump between locations, mimicking HyperCard’s card-linking behavior. They extend the concept with Zoom and View procedures for expanded room views and even a videodisc-linked multimedia version of the same idea.
Letter to the Editor – Brian Harvey
Brian Harvey writes in with detailed programming critiques of two articles from the September 1989 issue, pointing out how a MAKE-based recursive example could confuse students about variable scope and value versus name, and identifying inaccuracies in a reader’s reimplementation of the TEST, IFTRUE, and IFFALSE primitives. The editor introduces the letter as addressing specific technical issues raised in earlier columns.
Math Worlds – Two Turtles in a Hot Tub: Part Three – Sandy Dawson, editor (Featuring: David Pimm, Tom Kieren)
In the final installment of a three-part transcribed conversation, mathematics educators David Pimm and Tom Kieren discuss how powerful Logo primitives like “Squiral” parallel mathematical definitions and can lead students from action-based exploration toward abstract, property-based mathematical thinking. They trace how students’ informal experiments with turtle geometry echo the historical shift in mathematics from definitions by genesis to definitions by property.
Search and Research – To err is human… – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas Clements surveys research on common Logo programming errors, covering students’ struggles with procedures and subprocedures, MAKE and variable assignment, REPEAT statements, and IF/IFELSE logic. He draws on multiple studies to catalog specific misconceptions, such as confusing a variable with a box holding multiple values, and suggests instructional approaches like prefix notation and TEST/IFTRUE/IFFALSE that reduce these errors.
Euro Logo ’89 Report – Ken Johnson
Ken Johnson reports from the European Logo Conference in Ghent, Belgium, noting record attendance, delegates from Eastern Europe, and new software demonstrations including LogoWriter in multiple languages and Dutch products LCN Logo and Logonaut. He also describes Bulgaria’s wholesale adoption of Logo for its national mathematics curriculum and previews the next European conference planned for Parma, Italy.
About the Cover – Uncredited
A brief note identifies the issue’s cover art, “N.Y. Night,” as a student drawing created in Fran Rothkin’s computer class at JHS 217 in Queens, New York City. The caption credits the young artist and situates the piece within a classroom Logo art project.

December 1989 (Vol. 8, No. 4)

From the Editor – Happy Holidays – Sharon Yoder
Presents an allegorical holiday dream in which a teacher unwraps gifts of a dream Logo, a dream computer lab, and even “perfect students,” only to find the perfect classroom strangely unsatisfying. Reflects that a teacher’s relationships with real students matter more than any technology or facility.
About the Cover – Uncredited
Explains that this issue’s cover artwork was created by two second-grade students in a LogoWriter lab at Colts Neck Township Schools. Notes that their teacher, Jandy Bird, is the author of the issue’s article on cooperative learning with Logo.
Monthly Musings – ST, HT – Tom Lough
Recounts a nighttime outing in the US Virgin Islands where the author watched a hawksbill sea turtle nest on a National Park Service beach patrol. Draws a parallel to Logo’s SHOWTURTLE and HIDETURTLE commands, sharing sample procedures that track a turtle moving between “land” and “ocean.”
Logo Ideas – Time, Numbers, and Other Things – Eadie Adamson
Explores classroom experiments in which students test the largest number LogoWriter can handle and race the computer to count to a million, comparing procedures for speed and efficiency with help from other educators. Also shares Logo procedures for simulating the “chaos game” and a related fractal-generating design.
A Primary Instant Program Leads to Theme Booklets – Glenda Bentz
Describes an “instant” LogoWriter program that lets kindergarten through second-grade students draw with the turtle using only arrow keys and a few letter commands instead of typed syntax. Details how the activity progresses to saving individual student pages and culminates in a class booklet of imaginary animal drawings and stories.
Beginner’s Corner – Holiday Wrappings – Dorothy Fitch
Presents Logo procedures for generating decorative wrapping-paper patterns by sending the turtle across the screen at various headings, along with stamped-shape designs such as PAPER, PAPER2, and BELLPAPER. Also explains how to design matching holiday gift tags using stamped shapes and graphics-screen text fonts.
Cooperative Creations – Jandy Bird
Describes a cooperative-learning project in which first-grade students work in groups of three to choose turtle shapes, plan a story, and create it together in LogoWriter. Shares three student-written stories produced through the process and reflects on how it strengthened both language skills and pride in shared work.
LogoLinX – Turtle Out of Bounds: Terrapins Off-Screen – Judi Harris
Rounds up non-electronic turtle-related resources for Logo enthusiasts, including a mail-order gift catalog from the Center for Marine Conservation and an extensive bibliography of children’s books about turtles and tortoises. Also lists turtle-themed poems from literary anthologies, closing with an Ogden Nash poem about the turtle.
Math Worlds – CLIME Report: A Problem, a Plea, and Some Activities – Ihor Charischak, Bob Jensen & Richard Binswanger
Reports a sharp decline in Logo sessions at the NCTM annual conference despite CLIME’s new status as an NCTM affiliate, and urges readers to propose sessions at future math conferences. Presents three math microworld activities, Spiros, Exploring IT, and GeoShapes, that use Logo procedures to investigate spirolaterals, division, and geometric shapes.
Logo & Company – Sight and Sound: The Next Decade, Part I: The Sounds of Tomorrow – Glen Bull, Gina Bull
Examines the future of speech technology in classroom computers, contrasting the flexibility of speech synthesis with the natural quality of digitized speech and explaining the cost and compatibility barriers that have limited Logo’s use of both. Looks ahead to how built-in speech capabilities on machines like the Macintosh and NeXT will make talking programs easier to build and share.
A New Primitive for LogoWriter – Charles Crume
Reviews Logo’s FIRST, BUTFIRST, LAST, BUTLAST, and ITEM primitives before introducing a new custom procedure, BUTITEM, that reports a word or list with a specified element removed. Provides the BUTITEM code along with a demonstration program that uses it to display list items in random order.
Centering on Logo – The 1989 International Computer Problem Solving Contest: Junior Logo Results – Donald Piele and Sharon Yoder
Reports the results of the 1989 Junior Logo Division of the International Computer Problem Solving Contest, highlighting the strong showing of Irish student teams including winner Anne Chazarreta. Presents all five contest problems with sample Logo solutions and reflects on how programming style factored into the judging.
Search and Research – Recurrent Recursion Misconceptions – Douglas H. Clements
Surveys research on students’ persistent misconceptions about recursive Logo programs, including tendencies to treat recursion as looping, misread stopping conditions, or attribute intentionality to code. Discusses how prior BASIC programming experience worsens these bugs and notes that instructional interventions have only partially reduced them.

January 1990 (Vol. 8, No. 5)

From the Editor – Connections… and then what? – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on the stress and rewards of producing a themed issue of Logo Exchange and traces how Logo’s role in schools has shifted since she first introduced it in the early 1980s. She points to the proliferation of alternative software since Logo’s early dominance and urges readers to consider Glen and Gina Bull’s concept of “Learner-Based Tools” as they think about Logo’s future.
Monthly Musings – Connections: The Process of Procedures – Tom Lough
Tom Lough uses the Logo concept of a superprocedure calling subprocedures in sequence as a metaphor for the connection between teachers and students. He explores how intermediate “filler” commands placed between two procedures might represent intangible aspects of the teaching relationship, such as patience or trust.
Logo Ideas – There are Connections… and then there are connections. – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson describes how a student named Ted extended a Lego-Logo floor turtle program to use arrow-key control and touch sensors, then explores the value of designing Logo projects with a real audience in mind. She recounts a cross-class project pairing her fourth-graders with kindergartners around LogoWriter sign-making activities, arguing that connecting learners to each other can be the best Logo connection of all.
Introducing Lego-Logo to Elementary Students – Kwok-Wing Lai
Kwok-Wing Lai presents research on using the Lego Technic Control Set with Logo to teach elementary students problem-solving, metacognitive awareness, and cooperative learning, including sample Control Logo procedures for a traffic light system. He reports that participating students of both genders found the environment highly motivating and effective for developing planning, teamwork, and evaluation skills.
Beginner’s Corner – Back to the Future – The New Generation of Floor Turtles! – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch traces the history of Logo’s original robotic floor turtles and argues that physical robots offer learning benefits that screen turtles cannot match, then introduces the Terrapin Robotics kit as a modern option. She details the kit’s interface box, Lego buggy components, and sample programs, along with classroom activities for building and programming a robotic car.
LogoLinX – Logo Graphics by (Electronic) Mail – Judi Harris
Judi Harris explains how ASCII art can be transmitted through text-only electronic mail systems and bulletin boards, then describes the RLE and GIF encoding formats CompuServe uses to convert pixel-based Logo pictures into transferable text code. She illustrates the process with a student’s Logo drawing and directs readers to CompuServe forums where encoding and decoding software is available.
Making Projects Personal: Reflections on a LEGO-Logo Workshop – Mitchel Resnick
Mitchel Resnick recounts personal LEGO-Logo projects built by teachers at MIT’s Science and Whole Learning workshop, including a xylophone-playing robot, a rotating carousel, a pole-balancing machine, a fireworks display, and a hamster-monitoring “zoo.” He argues that the workshop’s success stemmed from encouraging diversity of project themes, working styles, and entry paths so participants could form deep personal connections to their work.
Ireland-Logoland – The 1989 International Computer Problem Solving Contest: Senior Logo Results – Donald T. Piele
Donald Piele reports the results of the Senior Logo Division of the 1989 International Computer Problem Solving Contest, profiling Irish winner Andrew Farrell of Trinity College Dublin (Featuring: Dr. Sean Close). He presents the five contest problems, including drawing interlocking triangles and simulating coin flips, along with sample Logo solutions for each.
Logo & Company – Sight and Sound: The Next Decade, Part II – Visions of the 90’s – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Chris Appert
The authors survey emerging visual technologies for Logo classrooms, including paint programs, graphics tablets, clip art, video and image digitizers, scanners, and videodisc players, with practical instructions for importing pictures into LogoWriter. They close by proposing the term “learner-based tools” for Logo-like environments and inviting readers to weigh in on whether Logo Exchange should broaden its scope to cover them.
Logo: Search and Research – To err is human… to debug, divine – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas Clements reviews research on common Logo programming bugs, describing du Boulay’s findings on frequent error types and Pea’s theory that many misconceptions stem from students treating the computer like a conversational partner. He outlines classroom strategies for helping students debug their mental models and argues, citing Papert, that Logo bugs should be treated as valuable opportunities for reflection rather than eliminated.
Global News – Paradise Lost, Gained and Lost Again – Dennis Harper, editor
Dennis Harper describes a 1989 University of the Virgin Islands master’s course that introduced Logo to Caribbean educators across three islands with support from visiting Logo experts, sparking rapid growth in interest and telecommunications projects. He then recounts how Hurricane Hugo devastated the region shortly afterward, setting back the fledgling Logo programs even as he expresses confidence they will recover.

February 1990 (Vol. 8, No. 6)

From the Editor – Evaluation and Technology – Sharon Yoder
Reflects on teaching a graduate “Logo for Educators” course and the tension between lecture-based instruction and students’ desire for a more Logo-like learning environment. Discusses giving a hands-on computer-based final exam for the first time and raises broader questions about how evaluation methods must evolve as technology like HyperCard changes what students can produce.
Monthly Musings – Put It Out – Tom Lough
Explains how the Logo primitive OUTPUT differs from commands like FORWARD by illustrating with example procedures such as SIXTY and a chain of HELPER, STUDENTS, and PICK procedures. Draws a parallel between needing a “place” ready to receive an OUTPUT’s result and the way teachers must prepare students to receive information before sharing it.
Logo Ideas – Just for Fun: Turtle Dances – Eadie Adamson
Describes a project in which fifth graders choreographed “dances” for LogoWriter’s four turtles, using commands like tell, ask, and each to coordinate group and solo movements. Details how students discovered sideways “slides” using xcor and ycor, encountered a bug that made turtles vanish, and extended the activity into animated, musical, and ecological variations.
Beginner’s Corner – Star Light, Star Bright, Lots of Logo Stars Tonight! – Dorothy Fitch
Presents several Logo procedures for drawing starbursts, a Star of David, and true five-pointed stars, explaining the mathematics of the Total Turtle Trip Theorem and why a polygon differs from a star. Extends the activity into a constellation project, offering a CANIS.MAJOR procedure and suggesting students research and program their own zodiac constellations.
LogoLinX – Euler and the Turtle – Judi Harris
Introduces Leonhard Euler’s classic puzzle of tracing figures without lifting the pen or retracing a line, connecting it to turtle graphics and the concept of odd and even vertices. Challenges readers and students to use the turtle to test Euler’s rules and to design their own solvable and unsolvable figures.
The 1989 ICPSC: Elementary Logo Results – Donald T. Piele
Reports the results of the 1989 International Computer Problem Solving Contest’s Elementary Logo Division, profiling homeschooled winners Noah and Adam Giotis and presenting the five contest problems with sample Logo solutions. Lists the full rankings of competing teams worldwide and announces details for the upcoming 1990 contest.
Math Worlds – The Power of Negative Thinking – Jim King (Featuring: A. J. “Sandy” Dawson)
Explores how Logo procedures like BUMPSQ produce unexpected and often strikingly different figures when given negative inputs instead of the positive values originally envisioned. Introduces two “negative thinking” strategies for programmers, including writing arc procedures such as LARC and RARC that correctly handle negative angle inputs.
Logo & Company – A Logophile’s Introduction to Hypercard – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull
Walks readers through creating a HyperCard stack and a “sticky button” resembling the experimental touch-screen buttons once seen in an Atari Logo lab, including setting the scripting user level and installing a compass icon. Shows how to move the button via the Message Box and a scripted “Center” button, drawing parallels between HyperCard buttons and Logo’s turtle.
Search and Research – Research-Based Suggestions for Understanding Logo – Douglas H. Clements
Offers research-based strategies for deepening students’ understanding of Logo, including a structured format for fully describing each command’s purpose, type, inputs, and effects. Illustrates the power of dramatizing programs, such as acting out reversed and recursive procedures like SQUARE.SPIRAL, to help students build accurate mental models of programming processes.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Jeff Richardson)
Presents Jeff Richardson’s report on Logo activity in Australia, covering Brian Silverman’s keynote and workshop at the Computer Education Group of Victoria conference and astrophysicist Barry Newell’s Logo books Turtle Confusion and Turtle Speak Mathematics. Previews the upcoming World Conference on Computers in Education in Sydney, noting Seymour Papert, Andrea diSessa, and Alan Kay as invited speakers.

March 1990 (Vol. 8, No. 7)

From the Editor – Are You a “Language Chauvinist?” – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on rereading Bruce MacLennan’s Principles of Programming Languages while teaching a new course on programming languages for educators, using it to argue against “language chauvinism” that treats one’s favorite language as the only legitimate one. She urges Logo educators to embrace change within Logo and to recognize learner-based software like HyperCard as part of the same larger family of tools that put students in control.
Monthly Musings – Do It Again! – Tom Lough
Tom Lough explores why REPEAT is such a beloved Logo command, tracing its addition to the language as a response to learners’ natural desire to reuse commands without retyping them. He demonstrates how REPEAT invites experimentation and surprising results, from equilateral-triangle mishaps to nested REPEAT structures, and poses a puzzle about the smallest valid repetition count.
Logo Ideas – “Driving” the Turtle – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson describes how her students built recursive “drive” procedures to move a turtle continuously, then extended them with LogoWriter’s programmable Control keys to steer direction and adjust speed in real time. She explains how a simple keys procedure combined with incrementing or decrementing a speed variable let students build an interactive car-driving simulation, complete with an on-screen speedometer.
Logo and Tangrams – Lani Telander (Featuring: Susan Bowers, Emilie Hitch, Jason Grais, Geoffrey Nadler)
Lani Telander outlines a cooperative-learning Tangram Unit in which fifth graders design a picture from seven tangram pieces on paper, then translate it into LogoWriter procedures for each shape. Student contributors add reflections on using word processing, TONE, and color to enhance their designs and on sharing the finished projects with grandparents and parents.
Beginner’s Corner – Pencil & Paper or the Turtle? – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch compares drawing approaches on paper versus with the turtle, opening with a first grader’s Kinderlogo star drawings that show a child discovering a pencil-like approach works best for that shape. She then contrasts this with a tic-tac-toe design, presenting several REPEAT-based turtle procedures that prove more efficient than a pencil-style, pen-lifting approach.
Cooperative Creations – Third Grade Dynamic Poetry – Jandy Bird
Jandy Bird explains a jigsaw cooperative-learning project in which third graders became LogoWriter “experts” in text commands, turtle positioning, and shape creation before collaborating to animate Shel Silverstein’s poem “Shapes.” She walks through sample procedures for animating the poem’s opening lines and describes how groups shared their finished dynamic poems with classmates.
LogoLinX – Transgendered Neology – Judi Harris
Judi Harris presents a playful Logo wordplay project in which procedures like HISYLLABLES, HERSYLLABLES, and SUBSTITUTE transform masculine-coded word parts into feminine equivalents, turning words like “lamentable” into “lawomentable.” She extends the idea with a THEIRSYLLABLES procedure for gender-neutral alternatives, framing the exercise as a way to engage students with syllabication and vocabulary study.
A Random Toolkit for Logo Writer – Charles E. Crume
Charles E. Crume addresses the quirks of LogoWriter’s RANDOM primitive, which reports a number one lower than expected, and introduces an RND procedure for generating random integers within any specified range. He builds on RND to create DICEROLL and RNDLIST procedures, along with sample guessing-game and dice-rolling programs.
Math Worlds – Teacher-Created Educational Software: Logo Tools – Henri Picciotto (Sandy Dawson, editor)
Henri Picciotto describes an encyclopedic suite of Logo-based mathematics tools he built for his secondary classroom, including GEOMETER for geometric constructions and GRAPHER, a widely used function-graphing tool for algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. He details LOCATER, a favorite tool for exploring locus problems, and explains five advantages of teacher-built Logo tools over polished commercial software, from consistent interfaces to student access to the underlying code.
Teachers Beginning to Think in Logo – Richard Austin
Richard Austin recounts a lab assignment in which teacher-education students wrote FLAG, FLAGS, MANYFLAGS, and CROSS procedures, finding that the CROSS figure prompted the widest variety of problem-solving approaches. He presents fifteen distinct CROSS procedures collected from students over four years to illustrate how differently people can solve the same Logo problem.
Logo & Company – Creating SETX and SETY in HyperCard – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull continue their HyperCard-Logo parallel column by showing how to write Hypertalk functions xcor and ycor, modeled on Logo’s XCOR and YCOR, using the “loc” property of a button. They then build SETX, SETY, UP, and DOWN handlers that let a HyperCard button move absolutely or relatively around the screen just as a Logo turtle does.
Search and Research – Stages of Learning Programming – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas H. Clements reviews research on the stages children pass through when learning Logo commands and programming more broadly, citing studies by Fein and colleagues, Gregg, Roberts, Kull, Howe, and Pea and Kurland. He connects these developmental stages to Linn’s chain linking language features, program design skills, and transferable problem-solving abilities.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Hannu Korhonen)
Dennis Harper presents Hannu Korhonen’s report on a visit to the University of Beijing, describing how Chinese-language Logo commands like CHONGFU and QIAN parallel REPEAT and FORWARD in meaning and function. The report surveys Chinese Logo textbooks and student projects, from turtle-drawn trees and flowers to Chinese calligraphy and a Chinese-character version of Apple MIT Logo built by Beijing University’s electronics factory.

April 1990 (Vol. 8, No. 8)

From the Editor: So, What is a “Logo Expert”? – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on what it means to be called a “Logo expert,” distinguishing between mastery of the language, talent for debugging, and a broader understanding of Logo philosophy and classroom environments. She shares a personal anecdote from early in her teaching career to encourage readers to recognize and share their own areas of expertise.
Monthly Musings: Re: Pete and Curses – Tom Lough
Tom Lough uses his son’s “Pete and Repete” joke as a springboard to explore the difference between repetition and recursion in Logo, comparing REPEAT loops with tail-recursive procedures. He offers everyday analogies, such as bookmarking a book or shifting topics in conversation, to help learners build a mental model of recursive processes.
Logo Ideas: Who’s the Expert? Levels of Expertise – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson discusses Brian Harvey’s three stages of learning to program – rules, apprenticeship projects, and computer science – and how confusing the first two stages can hinder classroom Logo instruction. She then describes a collaborative project with a fifth-grade English class in which students built Logo procedures to generate and critique sentences, sharpening their grasp of grammar along the way.
Beginner’s Corner: April Fools! – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch offers a collection of April Fools’ pranks and keyboard tricks for Logo classrooms, including creating an upside-down turtle shape and building a fake command interpreter that responds unexpectedly to typed commands. She also explains how to use READCHARACTER and ASCII codes to build interactive keystroke-driven programs, including detecting paddle buttons and Open-Apple key combinations.
Implementing Powerful Ideas: The Case for RUN – Rina Zazkis and Uri Leron
Rina Zazkis and Uri Leron present a classroom activity that introduces the Logo RUN command by having students generate variations on a “row of squares” procedure, eventually needing RUN to pass shape procedures as data. They discuss both the computer science perspective on RUN and the pedagogical value of building toward an advanced construct through concrete, student-generated variations.
Logo LinX: Reach Out and Touch Logo – Judi Harris
Judi Harris explains how to use Logo’s PADDLE and BUTTON? primitives to connect graphics tablets such as the KoalaPad, Animation Station, and Touch Window, including calibration procedures for mapping tablet coordinates to turtle screen positions. She describes classroom applications, including touch-sensitive picture and music activities, and a set of programs she developed for physically and mentally challenged students.
Math Worlds: The Case of the Babylonian Turtle – A Logo Mystery – Jim King (Sandy Dawson, editor)
Jim King investigates a series of Logo mysteries in which turtles fail to return to their expected positions after drawing polygons or moving toward a target, tracing the cause to versions of Logo that round headings to the nearest integer degree before executing FORWARD. He introduces a corrected CFD procedure to fix these “Babylonian” turtles and poses follow-up puzzles for readers to explore the phenomenon further.
Three-Dimensional Logo – Horacio C. Reggini
Horacio C. Reggini introduces a three-dimensional extension of Logo built on the commands TRAVEL, VEER, PITCH, and ROLL, modeled on the movements of a hand tracing an object’s contours in space. He demonstrates how combining these commands can generate ribbons, spiral staircases, and Mobius strips, illustrating an intrinsic, artisanal approach to describing three-dimensional geometry.
Logo & Company: Building a Turtle in HyperCard – “Mock Turtle” – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Glen and Gina Bull continue their HyperCard series by building a turtle-like button using custom icons for every five degrees of rotation, then scripting RIGHT, LEFT, FORWARD, BACK, SETH, and HOME commands to move it around the screen. They walk through the trigonometry needed to calculate new turtle coordinates, setting up a fully navigable HyperCard turtle to be given drawing ability in a future column.
Global Logo Comments: Notes From Around the World – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Marie Tada)
Dennis Harper’s international column introduces new Asian correspondent Marie Tada, who describes her work bringing Logo to St. Mary’s International School in Tokyo, and announces the publication of the Eurologo ’89 conference proceedings. The column then examines three common patterns by which Logo spreads into a society – through missionary zealots, interested local officials, and returning learners abroad – and the implications each has for adoption.
I Want Children to Reinvent the Wheel – Seymour Papert
In this essay introducing a LEGO Dacta product catalog bound into the issue, Seymour Papert reflects on how children reinvent ideas like the wheel and gear as part of their own learning, recalling how rediscovering gears as a child shaped his path to becoming a mathematician. He encourages readers to pursue their own hands-on reinvention with LEGO materials and to trust children as genuine inventors and discoverers.

MAY 1990 (Vol. 8, No. 9)

From the Editor – The Logo Exchange… or the Journal of Learner Based Tools? – Sharon Yoder
Yoder reflects on a growing tension in the Logo community between teacher-centered, classroom-ready content and broader philosophical material about learner-based tools, pointing to this issue’s mix of articles as an example of that divide. She previews changes for the coming year, including combined issues, theme issues, and a new “Extra for Experts” column edited by Mark Horney.
Monthly Musings – Qwerty Revisited – Tom Lough
Lough revisits Papert’s QWERTY phenomenon from Mindstorms and traces how his sense of “resonance” with Logo’s philosophy, shared with Glen Bull, led toward the broader concept of learner-based tools. He previews the Bull, Bull, and Harris article on Logo’s evolutionary role and anticipates a spirited discussion of the issue at the NECC Preconference Symposium on Logo.
Logo Ideas – Thinking Non-mathematically About Mathematical Physics Problems – Eadie Adamson
Adamson describes how her fifth-grade students iteratively built and debugged a series of Logo procedures to simulate a bouncing ball, adding movement, diminishing bounce, stop conditions, and a rolling motion based on real-world observation. Along the way the students encounter recursion, including the distinction between tail and embedded recursion, by watching Logo report on its own progress.
Beginner’s Corner – A Summer Program of Words and Lists – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch introduces Logo’s word- and list-processing commands through the framework of song forms, presenting example procedures for circular, verse-and-refrain, progressive-chain, and cumulative songs. She walks through programs such as a counting-down “100 Bottles of Beer” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to demonstrate recursion, list operations, and reporter procedures.
The Gears of Childhood – Glen Bull, Gina Bull, and Judi Harris
The authors trace Papert’s concept of gears as a transitional object through the history of Logo and argue that Logo should be understood as one example within a broader, thriving lineage of “learner-based tools” rather than an evolutionary endpoint. They propose renaming Logo Exchange to reflect this wider mission and close with a tongue-in-cheek account of being pursued by the mythical “Logo police.”
Pacman Penpals – Jandy Bird
Bird describes a cross-country pen-pal collaboration between her New Jersey gifted-and-talented class and a Pennsylvania fourth-grade class, in which students exchanged and progressively enhanced a LogoWriter pacman game. The project drew students into exploring sprite shapes, sound, color, and randomness while building programming skills and collaborative problem-solving.
MathWorlds – Confluence: Logo, Educational Technology, and Mathematics – edited by A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Dawson reflects on three experiences, a CMESG workshop, a graduate course built around Bowers’ cultural critique of educational computing, and a masters course on constructivism, that shaped his thinking on whether mathematics, technology, and Logo are converging or fragmenting. He argues that Logo’s pedagogy is fundamentally constructivist and incompatible with the view that computers, language, and mathematics are neutral and value-free.
Letter to the Editor – Brian Harvey
Harvey responds to an earlier “Language Chauvinist” editorial, arguing that programming languages should be judged by the ideas they embody, particularly functional programming and procedural abstraction, rather than treated as interchangeable or as a litmus test for political correctness. He also criticizes LogoWriter and Logo PLUS for dropping older features such as CATCH, THROW, DEFINE, TEXT, and property lists.
Logo and Company – Turtle Graphics for HyperCard – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The authors conclude their series on building a Logo-like turtle in HyperCard by adding pen-up and pen-down control, a drawLine procedure, a RUN command that emulates Logo’s REPEAT, and commands for pen width, shading, and filling. They close their eight-year run of the column with reflections on Logo’s evolution alongside HyperCard and other emerging learner-based tools.
Logo: Search and Research – Programming with Style – Douglas H. Clements
Clements presents Joni and Soloway’s research on the discourse rules of programming, arguing that readability, rather than efficiency, should guide how programming style is taught to students. He details maxims such as avoiding double-duty and half-duty variables, eliminating redundant variable initialization, and not merging multiple program goals into a single code segment.
Global Logo Comments from Japan and Uruguay – edited by Dennis Harper (Featuring: Marie Tada, Jose Valente)
Marie Tada reports on the growth of Logo Japan and its role in promoting LogoWriter, publishing the Logo World journal, and running the Logo-Net telecommunications exchange in Japanese schools. Jose Valente describes how pre-university students at Uruguay’s Instituto Yavne use Logo to study real functions, geometric transformations, the discovery of pi, and the development of educational tutorials.

Volume 9 (1990–1991)

SEPTEMBER 1990 (Vol. 9, No. 1)

From the Editor – News and Notes – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder opens the ninth volume by announcing two new columns, “Extra for Experts” edited by Mark Horney and “Questions Please!” edited by Frank Corley, both growing out of discussions at the NECC ’90 SIGLogo meeting. She reflects on a NECC panel about what makes something “Logo-like,” highlighting Terrapin president David McClees’s claim that Logo is flexible, powerful, open, exploratory, and forgiving.
Monthly Musings – Come On In! – Tom Lough
Tom Lough uses his childhood memories of Roy Rogers’s “Come on in!” invitation to argue that Logo Exchange must stay welcoming to inexperienced Logo teachers. He announces that a group of teachers coordinated by Donna Rosenberg will help generate and edit articles aimed specifically at beginners.
Beginner’s Corner – How Speedy is your Turtle? – Dorothy M. Fitch
Dorothy Fitch walks teachers and students through a step-by-step method for calculating a Logo turtle’s speed in miles per hour, using simple FORWARD commands, a ruler, and unit conversion. She explains why results vary across computers and measurement methods, and suggests classroom extensions such as comparing floor turtles or LEGO vehicles.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley
In the debut of this reader-driven column, Frank Corley invites Logo users of all experience levels to submit technical, philosophical, and student-originated questions for the community to answer. He offers guidelines for submitting clear, well-contextualized questions and lists several starter questions gathered from teachers at NECC ’90.
Logo Ideas – Exploring Language – Eadie Adamson (Featuring: Nicole Baldassini)
Eadie Adamson describes a collaboration with French teacher Nicole Baldassini in which beginning French students learned vocabulary and grammar by using the French-language version of LogoWriter. She details activities such as building a French “hyper dictionary,” writing bilingual definition procedures, and creating French Mother’s Day cards, and reports unexpected gains in accent recognition and spontaneous language use.
LogoLinX – Taking Stock in Vocabulary – Judi Harris
Judi Harris proposes a “vocabulary stock market” simulation in which students invest in and track the frequency of new words appearing in their own writing. She supplies a set of LogoWriter procedures that import word-processed text, tally word frequencies, and maintain individual student “word portfolios.”
Two Bridges Across the Rocket River – Ralph Olliges and Helen Miller
Ralph Olliges and Helen Miller present a tangram-based Logo activity in which students design two different bridges out of the seven classic tangram shapes so that narrow and wide boats can pass safely beneath. They frame the lesson around Polya’s problem-solving steps and Piaget’s concrete-to-abstract learning progression, and provide the complete Logo procedures used to draw both bridges.
Logo Connection – Six Practical Multimedia Suggestions for Logo – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull recommend six affordable hardware and software upgrades, including newer Logo versions, paint programs, video digitizers, LEGO TC Logo robotics, videodisc players, and modems, that extend Logo into multimedia and telecommunications. They give approximate costs for each item and argue that “scavenged multimedia” already available in many schools can bring Logo classrooms up to date.
Extra for Experts – Fractals I: Making Recursion Visible – Mark Horney
In the first installment of a new column and a three-part fractal series, Mark Horney explains how von Koch-style fractal generators can be converted into recursive Logo procedures, providing code for shapes such as the Spike, Snowflake, DragonSkin, and C curve. He offers classroom activities and discussion questions for introducing, modifying, and marking fractal procedures to make recursive structure visually apparent to students.
MathWorlds – Confluence: Logo, Educational Technology, and Mathematics – Further Reflections – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson, editor
Sandy Dawson continues his exploration of the constructivist philosophy underlying Logo, arguing that mathematics is created rather than discovered, that computer technology is not neutral, and that language carries cultural bias. He draws on Pirie and Kieren’s theory of “transcendent recursion” to describe how learners build mathematical understanding through layered, self-generated images.
Logo: Search and Research – Logo or “Logo-like”: The Great Debate – Douglas H. Clements
Douglas Clements reviews research comparing Logo to other programming languages and to “Logo-like” environments, concluding that language choice alone produces few differences but that Logo’s coherence as a single intellectual tool fosters greater self-esteem and intrinsic motivation. He cautions against both language chauvinism and Logo “fanaticism,” urging a balance of enthusiasm, critical reflection, and sustained research.
Global Logo Comments – Notes From Around the World – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: José Valente)
Dennis Harper opens the ninth year of this international column by describing his travels to NECC and WCCE and recounting the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in the Virgin Islands. Latin American correspondent José Valente reports on five Logo research projects underway in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, involving retained first graders, mentally deficient children, mathematical concept development, gifted students, and story creation.

October 1990 (Vol. 9, No. 2)

How Soon They Forget – Dave Moursund
Reflects on an anecdote about an Australian teacher unfamiliar with Seymour Papert to argue that Logo has matured beyond its founders and now depends on well-prepared teachers rather than exposure alone. Also announces two new introductory books on Logo and problem solving available free to teacher educators.
Should the Turtle Go to High School? – Tom Lough
Argues that Logo deserves more respect as a language for secondary students, drawing on the enthusiastic response to his conference presentations at NCTM and the World Conference on Computers in Education. Points to CLIME, new MIT Press titles, and more powerful high-school-capable Logo versions as signs that secondary Logo use could still take hold.
What’s Cookin’? – Dorothy Fitch
Presents a Halloween-themed RECIPE program that teaches Logo words and lists by randomly assembling silly recipes from category word-lists using the PICK procedure. Includes the full listing plus a Copy-Me student handout explaining how to edit the word lists and save personalized versions.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley
Answers a batch of beginner-level reader questions gathered after NECC, covering topics such as Logo Writer’s PRINTTEXT80 command, the LPUT primitive, and translating code between Logo versions. Invites readers to submit both questions and answers for future installments.
Logo Spirograph – Paula Sarver
Describes a third-grade unit pairing the physical Kenner Spirograph toy with a Terrapin Logo program that draws hypocycloids, helping students intuitively explore diameter, least common multiples, and pattern prediction. Provides the full Logo Spirograph procedure listing along with classroom tips for recordkeeping and saving designs.
The Name’s the Project, PQS(ition) Is the Game – Eadie Adamson
Recounts how observing a student’s “I AM JERRY” turtle-shape project became an opportunity to teach show pos, setpos, and superprocedures in Logo Writer. Walks through the incremental steps, including adding wait for dramatic timing, and suggests extensions like flashing names and LCD-style displays.
Turtling Around in Circles – Judi Harris
Explores the Total Turtle Trip Theorem as a way to help students genuinely grasp why a circle has 360 degrees, drawing on Ed Emberley’s Picture Pie books as a source of circle-based drawing projects. Presents a student-generated FILL.CIRCLE procedure that colors in circles by radiating lines from the center rather than tracing the circumference.
Thinking Like the Turtle – Bert Eliason
Chronicles a three-day shift in teaching approach where a middle school teacher encouraged students to “think like the turtle,” reasoning through movement and REPEAT statements themselves rather than being told the answers. Shares classroom dialogues with several students and connects one boy’s renewed confidence to Papert’s concepts of body-syntonic and ego-syntonic learning.
Creating a Hypermedia Adventure Story with Logo – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Paula Cochran
Demonstrates how Logo Writer’s page-based, hypermedia-like structure can be used to build a branching “Ulysses and the Cyclops” adventure story with the Choice and GetPage commands. Contrasts the ease of the Logo Writer version with the cumbersome PRINT-based approach required in older Logo versions, and argues for upgrading software alongside hardware.
Fractals II: Representations – Mark Horney
Extends a prior column on fractals by showing how multiple Logo procedures can call one another to generate multi-generator fractals such as the Dragon and Polya Sweep curves. Introduces directed graphs as a compact way to represent and analyze the relationships between a fractal’s generating procedures.
Chaotic Attractors in Logo – Hannu Korhonen (Math Worlds column, A. J. (Sandy) Dawson, editor)
Presents Logo procedures for plotting chaotic attractors such as the Gingerbreadman, a fern generated by the Random Iteration Algorithm, and the Cockatoo function, each built from simple recursive coordinate rules. Shows how small changes to starting values or parameters produce dramatically different shapes from the same underlying algorithm.
Turtle Soup: A Beginning Look at Logo Research – Douglas H. Clements
Surveys decades of Logo research on mathematics learning, problem solving, and social-emotional development, concluding that Logo’s benefits depend on a “mediated conceptual framework approach” rather than mere exposure or programming practice alone. Offers concrete recommendations for how teachers should mediate students’ Logo experiences to build awareness, structure, and transfer to non-Logo contexts.
Logo at the WCCE – Dennis Harper
Reports on the strong turnout for Logo sessions at the 1990 World Conference on Computers in Education in Sydney, including Seymour Papert’s keynote address and a well-attended SIGLogo meeting. Lists a sampling of Logo-related papers presented by researchers from Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United States.

November 1990 (Vol. 9, No. 3)

From the Editor: Looking BACK and FORWARD – Sharon Yoder
Reflects on ten years of Logo’s evolution, from early color-only, FILL-less versions to LogoWriter and Logo PLUS, previewing new developments such as Logo Express, the return of Object Logo, and Japan’s Findout software. Also recounts a museum visit that put the rapid pace of educational computing change into perspective.
Monthly Musings: Just a Little Bit – Tom Lough
Discusses a Compute! magazine article by Richard Leinecker that portrays Logo favorably as a full programming language supporting abstract thinking and creative writing. Celebrates this mainstream recognition as a sign that Logo may finally be gaining wider respect after years of being overlooked.
Beginner’s Corner: Quilt-making Revisited – Dorothy Fitch
Presents step-by-step guidelines for organizing a class Logo quilt project, including naming conventions for student procedures and a template QUILT program for assembling and saving the finished design. Also suggests a slide-show procedure for displaying multiple quilts and previews a follow-up column on symmetry and rotation.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley
Poses a set of open-ended “big questions” gathered from Logo teachers, covering topics such as integrating Logo across the curriculum, running a videodisc player from LogoWriter, and justifying why students should learn Logo at all. Invites readers to submit point/counterpoint responses for publication in future issues.
Logo Ideas: Two New Ideas – Eadie Adamson
Reviews the book “Design Technology: Children’s Engineering” by Susan Dunn and Rob Larson, highlighting its relevance to the design process in LEGO-Logo projects despite never mentioning Logo directly. Also introduces LogoExpress, LCSI’s new telecommunications version of LogoWriter, explaining how to set up mailer pages and connect to LCSI’s bulletin boards in New York and Montreal.
Logo LinX: DisSPELLing a Myth – Judi Harris
Demonstrates how Logo procedures can help students recognize spelling patterns, such as consonant endings and vowel blends, instead of relying on rote memorization of word lists. Provides sample Logo code for checking and generating words that follow these patterns as a classroom spelling activity.
Logo Linguistics: What to Do with Those “Silly Sentences” – Mark L. Evans
Explores how Logo can generate simple kernel sentences based on Jim Sabol’s sentence-type framework, using word lists and procedures to produce grammatically varied output for classroom grammar discussions. Includes full program listings for three sentence types along with suggested activities for examining grammatical and semantic accuracy.
Logo Connections: Imported Graphics – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Explains the various Apple II and Macintosh graphics formats and resolutions usable with Logo, describing how paint programs, digitizing tablets, and clip art libraries can supply images for import into Logo projects. Also critiques LogoWriter for the Apple IIGS for adopting a proprietary graphics format that blocks compatibility with other conversion and digitizing tools.
Object Logo Is Back – Hazem I. Sayed
Reports that Paradigm Software has acquired Object Logo from Apple and resumed its development and support after a period of unavailability. Describes the language’s advanced features, including true fractional arithmetic, an incremental compiler, and object-oriented programming built around classes like the built-in Turtle.
Math Worlds: Logo and Mathematics – Sprite Control with First Graders – Joao Filipe Matos (edited by Sandy Dawson)
Recounts a classroom episode in which two first graders work out how to move a turtle a precise distance by combining FORWARD and WAIT commands, gradually discovering how to decompose an integer into a product plus a remainder. Argues that such open-ended Logo investigations bring school mathematics closer to the genuine inquiry practiced by professional mathematicians.
Extra for Experts: Fractals III – Monsters of Mathematics – Mark Horney
Explores self-similarity, space-filling curves, and fractional dimensionality as defining characteristics of fractals, using examples like the Dragon curve, the Peano curve, and von Koch’s Snowflake. Explains how the Hausdorff measure gives fractals their fractional dimensions and proposes hands-on Logo projects for students to design their own fractal curves.
Logo: Search and Research – Strategies for Writing Procedures – Douglas Clements
Compares top-down and bottom-up programming strategies among young Logo students and reports on a Belgian study that taught sixth graders to plan procedures with tree diagrams before coding. Suggests that while top-down planning correlates with greater programming success, teachers should still value and build on the intuitive, bottom-up approaches many students prefer.
Global Logo Comments: Report from Japan (Findout) – Marie Tada (edited by Dennis Harper)
Introduces Findout, an integrated Logo-based software package developed in Japan by the Fukutake Publishing Company that combines word processing, graphics, and database management into one “personal work station.” Describes classroom observations of Japanese students using Findout for science and language study, along with its multi-turtle graphics, Kanji character support, and planned future enhancements.

December/January 1990-1991 (Vol. 9, No. 4)

From the Editor: Why Logo? – Sharon Yoder
Yoder reflects on teaching a required Logo course to an international group of graduate students at the University of Oregon, describing how assigned readings and the “Talking Turtle” video shift students from viewing Logo as a mere programming language to grasping its underlying philosophy. She argues that exposing preservice teachers to this philosophy, even briefly, may be one of the most powerful ways to influence how the classrooms of tomorrow use technology.
Monthly Musing: Don’t Close the Blinds – Tom Lough
Lough recounts a poignant story about a third-grader whose spontaneous excitement over rain falling from a sunny sky was shut down by a teacher who closed the classroom blinds rather than seize the teachable moment. He connects this to the spirit of Logo learning, urging educators to welcome students’ curious observations instead of suppressing them.
Logo Ideas: Using LogoExpress – Eadie Adamson
Adamson walks readers through practical, often-overlooked features of the LogoExpress telecommunications software, including using “tool keys” to load mailer procedures without clogging memory, and creating and sending both text files and LogoWriter shapes pages. She provides step-by-step command sequences for mailing multiple files and troubleshooting shapes pages received from other users.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley (and friends)
Corley answers a backlog of reader questions from prior issues covering topics such as teaching SETH and SETPOS/SETXY, bottom-up versus top-down programming approaches, checking typed input against expected answers, and the difference between RIGHT and FORWARD. He also laments the low volume of reader-submitted questions and repeats two still-unanswered LogoWriter and Terrapin Logo PLUS questions in hopes of getting responses.
Beginner’s Corner: More Quilts! – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch presents a set of Logo procedures for generating traditional quilt patterns from just two building blocks, a filled square and a rotatable filled half-square, inspired by an Arithmetic Teacher article on symmetry in folk art. She includes full procedure listings, sample designs, and classroom discussion questions about lines of symmetry and rotational symmetry.
Easy Map Drawing with LogoWriter – Francisco Quesada
Quesada introduces a MAP procedure that lets students trace irregular outlines, such as geographic maps, using single keystrokes to move and turn the turtle while the program automatically records clean instruction lists onto the flip side. He also describes the Costa Rican Logo Project, a nationwide effort bringing LogoWriter-equipped computer labs into elementary public schools.
Logo LinX: Luminescent Explorations – Judi Harris
Harris offers holiday-themed LogoWriter activities in which students decorate previously drawn houses and buildings with strings of stamped “lights,” using tool procedures like LIT.FD and AREA to practice estimating perimeter and area. She frames the activity around winter-holiday lighting traditions and provides full code listings for the estimation and lighting tools.
Math Worlds: Sunrise in Australia! – Sandy Dawson, editor
Dawson profiles the Sunrise Project, an Australian Council for Educational Research initiative that reimagines secondary school computing as a medium for students to construct and test their own knowledge rather than simply receive information, drawing on LogoWriter and Boxer environments. The column also previews the upcoming LME5 conference in Cairns, Australia, tracing the history of the Logo and Mathematics Education conference series.
A Learning Styles Logo Environment – Mary F. Salter
Salter describes a semester-long experiment teaching Logo to preservice teachers using Bernice McCarthy’s 4-Mat learning styles model, offering color-coded materials for guided discovery, dissection, and free-exploration approaches alongside traditional lecture. She reports on student reactions and outcomes, noting a shift toward free exploration over the term and generally deeper engagement than in lecture-only years.
Logo Connections: Digitized Images – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls explore how inexpensive video digitizers can import photographs into LogoWriter for projects like electronic class yearbooks and school-based “treasure hunt” adventures modeled on Carmen Sandiego. They also cover practical considerations such as digitizer resolution, image formats, and equipment costs for Apple, IBM, and Macintosh systems.
Extra for Experts: Conversations With Logo, Part II – Michael I. Tempel
Tempel presents a scripted dialogue between a puzzled programmer and a personified LogoWriter that walks through debugging a number-guessing game, illustrating the distinction between readlist’s list output and a custom readnumber procedure. The conversation demonstrates how list-versus-word comparisons can silently break program logic and how to fix them.
Logo: Search and Research: Strategies for Solving Turtle Geometry Problems – Douglas H. Clements
Clements surveys research distinguishing “visual” and “analytic” strategies students use when solving turtle geometry tasks, citing studies by Hillel and Kieran showing that analytic reasoning better supports mathematical generalization. He closes with seven concrete teaching recommendations for encouraging students to move beyond visual approximation toward analysis of angle and length relationships.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Harry Pinxteren)
Harper previews major upcoming international Logo conferences, including LME5 in Cairns and EuroLogo 91 in Parma, Italy. The column also carries Harry Pinxteren’s report on Dutch Logo students winning top honors at the International Informatics Olympiad in Minsk, USSR, where LCN Logo outperformed Pascal and BASIC solutions.

February 1991 (Vol. 9, No. 5)

From the Editor – Visions – Sharon Yoder
Reflects on Judi Harris’s Logo LinX column describing a scene from the NOVA program Talking Turtle and explores how Logo’s philosophy has extended over time through LEGO robotics, telecommunications, multimedia, and Object Logo. She also discusses a graduate student’s vision of future integrated educational software and closes with a Papert quotation about bridging the mathematical and the sensual.
Monthly Musing – Stick Your Neck Out – Tom Lough
Recounts finding an inspirational magazine notice that used a turtle image to encourage risk-taking, then connects it to the spirit of experimentation central to Logo learning. He urges readers to submit their own project ideas to the journal and follows up on an earlier column about Logo in secondary schools by highlighting a high school Logo curriculum developed by Ron Place.
Logo Ideas – What’s Your Sound? – Eadie Adamson
Describes how her students explored LogoWriter’s tone primitive to build musical alphabet procedures, eventually creating programs that could “talk” and “sing” names and sentences using assigned frequencies. The article includes procedure listings for playing letters, words, and punctuation as sounds, along with a full table of note frequencies and extension ideas.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley (Featuring: Brian Harvey)
Relays Brian Harvey’s detailed answers to reader questions from an earlier column, covering how LPUT works compared to SENTENCE, how to sequence Logo concepts for instruction, and recommended books and institutes for learning Logo. Harvey also describes his preference for student-driven exploration over rigid lesson planning.
Beginner’s Corner – Free-Wheeling in Logo – Dorothy Fitch
Walks through multiple approaches to drawing a bicycle wheel in Logo, comparing a many-sided polygon approximation of a circle to one based on precise circumference calculations. The column builds up several complete WHEEL procedures and offers extension challenges for readers to try on their own.
Lego, the Curriculum, and Children – Judith Menken
Describes how a LEGO/Logo-based “Machines” unit was woven into an integrated primary-grade curriculum at an alternative East Harlem school, connecting science, math, language, and social studies through building, testing, and driving LEGO vehicles. She shares sample Logo programs for driving and racing LEGO cars and reflects on how the unit engaged children, including one with significant learning challenges.
Logo LinX – From A Different Angle – Judi Harris
Recounts being inspired by the Talking Turtle documentary to develop Logo projects connecting geometry and physical movement, including a bulletin board of gymnastics photographs labeled with angles for students to estimate. She describes how this sparked student Logo projects animating dance, ice skating, and sign language poses.
MathWorlds – LEGO TC logo: A Study of Children’s Learning – Sandy Dawson and David Bell (Sandy Dawson, editor)
Presents findings from an exploratory study and a follow-up formal study of grade 4-7 students using LEGO TC Logo, examining whether it fostered science-like and inventor-like behavior, cooperation, and gender-equitable participation. The authors compare teacher and student perceptions across several classrooms and outline lessons learned for structuring future LEGO TC Logo research.
Logo Connections – Logo Robotics – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Explores LEGO TC Logo and Terrapin’s LEGO interface as multimedia robotics extensions of Logo, tracing the concept back to Papert’s early writings on programming physical devices. The authors discuss the strengths and limitations of LEGO TC Logo’s outdated disk format and missing commands, and describe innovative classroom and telecomputing projects using LEGO robotics.
Date, Time, Palette, and Diskspace: Four New Primitives for LogoWriter on the IBM/PC – Charles E. Crume
Presents four assembly-language-based procedures that extend IBM/PC LogoWriter to report the system date and time, switch CGA color palettes, and report available disk space. Each procedure is given as full code along with example usage and sample output.
Extra for Experts – But Can I Shoot Down Aliens with It? An Assembly Language Enhancement for Logo – Ron Hackett (Mark Horney, editor)
Demonstrates how to install a short assembly-language “phasor” sound effect into Apple LogoWriter using the .CALL primitive, giving students dramatic UP, DOWN, and PHASOR sound commands beyond the built-in TONE command. The article includes the full assembly code and instructions for adapting it to Apple Logo II, LCSI Logo II, and Terrapin Logo.
Logo: Search and Research – Strategies for Learning Logo – Douglas Clements
Examines research into why some students learn Logo programming more successfully than others, describing contrasting patterns such as “stoppers” who disengage at the first difficulty and “movers” who tinker without reflection. He discusses the importance of close tracking and breaking problems into manageable pieces, and offers teaching suggestions for helping students develop better programming strategies.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor
Surveys four recent international Logo research studies from Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Virgin Islands, covering young children’s understanding of recursion, LEGO-Logo’s effect on problem solving and learning styles, and comparisons of Logo, Pascal, and BASIC instruction. Contact information for each researcher is provided for readers wanting more detail.

March 1991 (Vol. 9, No. 6)

Is Logo THE Answer? – Sharon Yoder
Yoder examines four categories of educational software from her graduate course syllabus and considers whether Logo can serve as a subject-based, generic, learner-based, and teacher tool. She concludes that while Logo fits into all four categories, it remains one valuable tool among many rather than the single answer to classroom computing needs.
Surprise, Surprise! – Tom Lough
Lough recounts stumbling onto an unexpected pattern while experimenting with the Logo commands FORWARD 15 RIGHT HEADING and reflects on a former student’s plea not to be told the answer to a discovery. He withholds his own explanation and instead challenges readers to test different initial headings and share what they find.
Stringing Beads – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch presents a set of annotated Logo procedures that let young children create strings of beads in different shapes, sizes, and colors, including a BEADS game that challenges students to replicate a randomly generated pattern. She also provides conversion notes for adapting the procedures to other Logo dialects.
Rhyme Paradigm – Judi Harris
Harris introduces HINKY PINKY rhyming word puzzles as a vocabulary and syllabication activity, then demonstrates Logo list-processing procedures that randomly generate rhyming noun and adjective pairs and store user-supplied definitions for them. She discusses several classroom approaches for using the puzzles deductively and inductively with students.
Questions and Comments: Pleas and Thank Yous – Frank Corley
Corley and his math and computer science colleagues pose a wide range of questions about teaching Logo in grades seven through twelve, covering curriculum texts, local variables, the transition from Logo to Pascal, and the place of programming courses in secondary schools. He invites readers to respond with advice and shared experience for the department’s ongoing curriculum challenges.
Logo and Videodiscs – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull explain how Logo can control a Pioneer videodisc player, walking through procedures such as SEND, PLAY, FIND, HALT, and SEGMENT that let a turtle trigger specific frames or video segments. They close with troubleshooting tips for cabling, baud rate, and hardware problems encountered when connecting a videodisc player to a classroom computer.
Star Polygons: More Questions and Answers – Rina Zazkis (Sandy Dawson, editor)
Zazkis uses the POLY procedure to investigate how to construct star polygons such as the 11-sided star, deriving the relationship between the number of points, the skip value, and the turning angle. She generalizes the method to show when an n-sided star polygon exists and how many distinct versions can be drawn for a given n.
Mandelbrot’s Sweep of the Koch Snowflake – Jane F. Kern (Mark Horney, editor)
Kern walks through the construction of Mandelbrot’s plane-filling sweep of the Koch snowflake, deriving the scaling factors and turning angles needed to write the recursive MANDELBROT.SWEEP procedure. She also explains how to calculate the fractal dimension of the resulting curve and extends the discussion to related plane-filling designs like the Monkeys Tree curve.
A New Vision of Logo in the Secondary School – Douglas H. Clements
Clements describes the Plane Geometry System, a Bulgarian extension of Logo that lets secondary students construct and dynamically manipulate geometric objects while building reusable procedures like PERPBIS. He reviews early classroom research from Bulgarian and American workshops suggesting the approach helps students discover geometric relationships and motivates interest in formal proof.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper, editor (Featuring: Jose Armando Valente)
This installment of Global Logo Comments reports on emerging Logo activity in Romania before turning to Jose Armando Valente’s account of a Brazilian workshop designed to broaden teachers’ narrow view of Logo as merely a graphics tool for children. It also describes a long-running Logo project at the Universidade Catolica de Petropolis that uses Logo activities to help both university and precollege students reflect on their own thinking and learning.
The Logo Project: 1990 ICPSC Results – Donald T. Piele
Piele reports on the 1990 International Computer Problem Solving Contest, where students from Ireland’s Logo Project at St. Patrick’s College swept the top rankings in the Elementary, Junior, and Senior Logo divisions. He profiles winning students Andrew Farrell and Eoin Curran, details the contest’s format and problems, and announces the dates for the 1991 competition.

APRIL 1991 (Vol. 9, No. 7)

From the Editor: It Can’t Happen to Me – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on Oregon’s drastic budget cuts that eliminated the University of Oregon’s teacher education division and Oregon State’s College of Education entirely. She connects this crisis to the Logo community’s mission, arguing that meaningful educational reform and Papert’s vision cannot be realized without sustained financial commitment to education.
Monthly Musing: Replacing the B-Word – Tom Lough
Tom Lough recounts his lighthearted quest to replace the word BASIC whenever it appears alongside Logo, eventually settling on “fundamental” as a substitute. He ties the term to a story from Seymour Papert about children describing Logo class as fun, hard, and Logo, landing on “fundamental” as a blend of fun and mental.
Logo Ideas: Counting to a Million Revisited – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson describes a follow-up classroom experiment at The Dalton School in which fifth graders used LogoWriter and LogoExpress clock primitives to estimate and time how long a computer takes to count to a million. She details how students refined their countup procedures, discovered ways to speed up processing, and compares the exercise to an earlier version using Lego/Logo’s timer primitive.
SHUFFLE: A Logo Primitive to Rearrange the Items in a List – Charles Crume
Charles Crume presents a recursive Logo primitive called SHUFFLE, built with a supporting BUTITEM procedure, that randomly rearranges the elements of any word or list. He demonstrates its use with a sample word list and with a more elaborate procedure that generates and shuffles an electronic deck of playing cards.
Beginner’s Corner: Logo-to-Logo Exchange – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch surveys the many dialects of Logo across computer platforms and explains why their commands differ, tracing the split between MIT-derived Terrapin/Apple Logo syntax and LCSI’s LogoWriter syntax. She provides comparison tables of equivalent graphics, list-processing, conditional, and input commands to help readers translate programs between versions.
Logo LinX: The Handwriting on the Screen – Judi Harris
Judi Harris describes using LogoWriter turtle graphics to reconstruct the geometric structure of cursive letters, starting with the letters h and i, using ARCL and ARCR arc-drawing tool procedures. She frames this approach as a way to make tedious handwriting instruction more mathematically engaging for upper-elementary and middle-school students.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley
Frank Corley clears out his backlog of reader questions and answers, covering topics such as writing a Logo procedure to randomly select and remove names from a class list, finding solid LogoWriter reference books, and Logo conference opportunities. He also shares reader-submitted answers to earlier questions, including a PRINTCOLUMN procedure for overriding printer margins and advice on freeing space on a full ProDOS disk.
MathWorlds: Filling in the Gaps with Logo Software – Ihor Charischak (Sandy Dawson, Editor)
Ihor Charischak, president of CLIME, describes efforts to collect and share teacher-created Logo microworlds and details a New Jersey project pairing high school math teachers with programmers to develop custom Logo software. He walks through a coordinate-geometry graphing unit built around the fictional town of Coordinateville, including activities like Hurkle, Family Plots, and Mini Green Globs.
Logo Connections: Logo and Telecommunications – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull share examples of Internet and BITNET correspondence Logo educators have received from Finland and Spain, and describe telecommunications links such as the Charlottesville-Barcelona pen pal exchange and a Logo robotics collaboration with Moscow. They also explain how modems, bulletin boards, and services like LogoExpress let Logo users exchange procedures and outline emerging statewide public education networks connecting schools to the Internet.
Extra for Experts: Using Assembly Language in Terrapin Logo for the Apple II – Susan Wells Rollinson (Mark Homey, Editor)
Susan Wells Rollinson explains how to adapt published 6502 assembly language routines, such as a screen-negative effect, for use in Terrapin Logo and Logo PWS using the Logo Assembler utility on the Utilities disk. She walks through modifying the OPCODES and ASSEMBLER files, assembling a sample NEGATIVE routine, and calling the resulting machine code from a Logo program.
Logo: Search and Research – GeoTools: Logo-Based Geometric Construction – Douglas Clements
Douglas Clements introduces GeoTools, a set of Logo pseudo-primitives developed for the Logo Geometry curriculum that let students construct and measure points, lines, and shapes alongside the turtle. He describes classroom activities involving triangle classification, perpendicular bisectors, and circles, and reports encouraging early field-testing results on students’ geometric understanding.

May 1991 (Vol. 9, No. 8)

Endings, Changes, and a New Beginning – Sharon Yoder
Yoder reflects on Logo Exchange approaching its tenth year and announces that, for financial and staffing reasons, the journal will move from eight issues a year to four, longer issues. She also introduces the journal’s shift to a refereed publication model, with Judy Kull overseeing article review, and invites readers to contribute questions, letters, articles, and artwork.
From the “Other” Editor – Judith Kull
Kull introduces herself as the new Associate Editor and shares reflections from graduate students in her Learning and Logo class about their first encounters with Logo, problem-solving, and debugging. She invites teachers to submit classroom-tested articles and describes the new peer-review process she will coordinate.
Cross My Heart – Tom Lough (Monthly Musings)
Lough traces the newsletter’s history from its 1982 origins as the eight-page National Logo Exchange through its growth and merger into the present Logo Exchange, crediting contributors like Steve Tipps, Glen Bull, and Sharon Yoder along the way. He marks the symbolic close of Volume 9 as the end of the letter “X” era he had long anticipated, with Volume 10 beginning next.
Letter to the Editor – Carole Rivera
Rivera responds to an earlier “Why Logo?” article by recounting her own path from skepticism about classroom computers to embracing the “Logo philosophy” through a BASIC-based teacher training course. She describes eight years as a building computer coordinator using Logo and LogoWriter with elementary students and reflects on how the computer extended her own thinking as an adult learner.
Logic Game – Dorothy Fitch (Beginner’s Corner)
Fitch presents a Mastermind-style logic game in which Logo secretly picks a shape, color, and size and gives hot/warm/cold feedback as students guess the combination by drawing shapes. She walks through building the Apple LogoWriter procedures step by step, including PICK, REPORT, guess-counting, and simplified abbreviations for younger players.
In the Spirit of Play: Playful Polygons – Eadie Adamson (Logo Ideas)
Adamson offers a set of open-ended, end-of-year Logo explorations built around a growing “poly” procedure, adding stop rules, color changes, dot markers, and reversed drawings. She extends the idea into “strange polys” like double, triple, and quad procedures that produce increasingly unusual, colorful concentric designs.
Did Nietzsche Know Logo? – Judi Harris (Logo LinX)
Harris pairs quotations from Papert’s Mindstorms with strikingly similar statements from philosophers and educators across history, including Nietzsche, Aristotle, Dewey, and Emerson. She argues that Logo’s philosophy of learning through engagement and debugging is a natural extension of much older progressive educational thought.
Questions Please! – Frank Corley
Corley closes out the column’s first year with a correction on an earlier IF/IFELSE coding error, answers reader questions about Logo conferences and assessment resources, and shares Brian Harvey’s detailed responses on local variables, the DEFINE and TEXT primitives, and building a CASE-style statement. He thanks contributors and signs off with a farewell for the summer.
Non-Euclidean Logo Microworlds – W. Gary Martin (Sandy Dawson, editor) (Math Worlds)
Martin describes R-Logo and L-Logo, turtle-based microworlds that let students experience Riemannian and Lobachevskian geometry firsthand by drawing shapes where the Parallel Postulate no longer holds. He explains how these environments support the NCTM Standards’ call for students to compare axiomatic systems and develop intuitive understanding of non-Euclidean concepts.
A Turtle in Your Window – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull (Logo Connections)
The Bulls review LogoWriter for the Macintosh, highlighting its multiple-window compatibility, clipboard-based graphics import and export, serial-port videodisc control, digitized sound recording, and built-in clock and timer. They also note current limitations, such as single-font pages and restricted graphics copying, while praising the program as a major advance over earlier Logo versions.
Object Logo 2.51: A Brief Review – Der-Thanq Victor Chen (Mark Horney, editor) (Extra for Experts)
Chen reviews Object Logo 2.51 for the Macintosh, examining its expanded debugging tools, new ratio and complex number data types, additional control structures like DoUntil and While, and its object-oriented programming environment built around objects such as Turtle and Window. He weighs these strengths against weaknesses including a manual that assumes prior object-oriented experience and a less intuitive user interface than LogoWriter.
Geometric Construction Programs: What Have We Learned? – Douglas H. Clements (Logo: Search and Research)
Clements reviews research on the Geometric Supposer and related construction programs, discussing how students develop and test conjectures, struggle with the concept of mathematical proof, and benefit from teaching strategies that connect inquiry to curriculum. He draws out implications for teaching geometry with Logo, including the value of cooperative student pairs and the need to rethink assessment in inquiry-based computer environments.

Volume 10 (1991–1992)

Fall 1991 (Vol. 10, No. 1)

From the Editor – Something Old and Something New – Sharon Yoder
Yoder introduces the redesigned, quarterly Logo Exchange marking its tenth year of publication and announces that submitted articles will now be peer-refereed under Judy Kull’s editorial oversight. She reflects on her own path into Logo use since 1979 and reminds readers that the journal’s core purpose remains helping teachers find a lasting place for Logo in the classroom.
Reflections – Seymour Papert
Papert offers a personal periodization of Logo’s history, describing the 1960s as “classical,” the 1970s as “romantic,” and the 1980s as a “reactionary” period in which school bureaucracies isolated computers into labs to blunt their transformative potential. He argues that as computer numbers in schools grow and new teachers arrive already comfortable with technology, the conditions for genuine educational change are returning.
Quarterly Quantum – A Time of Decadence? – Tom Lough
In his first “Quarterly Quantum” column, replacing “Monthly Musing,” Lough plays on the word “decadent” to celebrate Logo Exchange’s tenth year of continuous publication. He urges readers to mark the anniversary by taking action in areas such as assessment, mathematics education, software vendor support, conference presentations, and the formation of new Logo-related user groups.
LO-GOES Russian – Emily Myers
Myers describes teaching Logo to recently emigrated Russian students at a Delaware school, using a modified single-keystroke program that toggles between Cyrillic and ASCII fonts for bilingual writing and drawing. She also explains a companion procedure that turns keyboard letters into musical notes, letting students create simple tunes alongside their bilingual pictures.
Beginner’s Corner – A Is for Apple! Or Control-A, or Maybe Even r-A! – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch walks beginning Logo users through building single-keystroke programs, starting from a simple loop-and-command structure and expanding it to detect ASCII codes, Control-key combinations, and Apple key presses. She also covers Macintosh key codes and offers sample single-key projects such as directional movement and variable turtle turns.
Linking Logo and Literature – Amazing Gardens – Teri McNee
McNee proposes pairing children’s literature with Logo activities, suggesting turtle-drawn webs for Charlotte’s Web, pebbles for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and kites for Frog and Toad Are Friends. She details a full lesson plan in which students guide the turtle through a Peter Rabbit-themed garden maze by translating compass directions into Logo commands.
Logo Ideas – Hypertext Revisited – Eadie Adamson
Adamson traces her three years of work building LogoWriter hypertext tools, from an early text-only footnoting system to a combined program that incorporates scanned images, sound, and videodisc sequences. She recounts introducing the approach to fourth graders using a videodisc almanac and reflects on how quickly they grasped nonlinear, reader-directed exploration.
Why a Turtle? – Thoughts from Seymour – Seymour Papert
In a brief reflection, Papert explains why the turtle was chosen as Logo’s central character, citing the need for a relatable, slow, and unthreatening animal linked to Grey Walter’s 1950s cybernetic “Tortoise.” He notes that despite one German translator’s attempt to substitute a hedgehog, children’s affection for turtles has held up over time.
Logo LinX – Arboreal Aging – Judi Harris
Harris connects the study of tree rings to Logo programming, explaining how bark, cambium, and annual growth rings encode a tree’s age and history. She provides Logo procedures for drawing concentric circles both by radius and by circumference and suggests having students create their own “arboreal autobiographies” using ring patterns to represent life events.
Turtles Invade the Kindergarten Classroom! – Molly Kniffen
Kniffen recounts a kindergarten unit built around a playful fantasy of “enemy turtles” invading the classroom, which she used to introduce shapes and direction-giving before ever touching a computer. Once the class moved to MECC’s EZ Logo software, the same skills let non-reading five-year-olds successfully program the on-screen turtle to draw squares, rectangles, and original pictures.
Math Worlds – …the heart of mathematical research is tinkering… – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
In his inaugural “Math Worlds” column for the redesigned journal, Dawson recounts his own path into Logo through Simon Fraser University’s Logo courses and the 1985 World Logo Conference. He argues, drawing on Al Cuoco’s claim that mathematical research is fundamentally tinkering, that secondary mathematics teaching will only change once teachers let students construct and test their own mathematical conjectures using tools like Logo and spreadsheets.
Windows on Logo – The First Decade of LX – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls recount their own history with microcomputers and Logo, from a homemade 1976 microprocessor system through their discovery of Mindstorms and the founding of Logo Exchange by their student Tom Lough. They discuss Logo’s defining characteristic as an extensible toolmaking environment and preview their new column, which will explore Logo’s future on multi-window, workstation-style computers.
Lunch and Logo – Chris Held
In a letter to editor Sharon Yoder, Held describes a Logo Writer probability program he wrote during a lunch break to help students visualize dice-roll randomness by having the turtle simulate thousands of rolls and tally the results. Running the simulation 6,000 times produced roughly even totals across all six faces, helping students grasp large-sample randomness.
Extra for Experts – Finding a Place for Logo – Mark Horney
Horney warns that many schools have crowded Logo out of the curriculum by dedicating most computer lab time to generic computer-literacy classes, leaving Logo to compete for scarce remaining access. He proposes a “Computing Resource Chart” for planning Logo activities across different levels of computer availability and argues that such activities must be curriculum-integrated, justifiable, efficient, and adaptable to survive.
Logo: Search and Research – Turtle Talk – Douglas H. Clements
Writing in an interview format with a fictional talking turtle, Clements reviews a decade of Logo research, distinguishing a shallow “exposure approach” from a more effective “mediated conceptual framework approach” in which teachers actively guide students’ reflection on Logo activities. He highlights research showing Logo’s strongest, most consistent benefits lie in social and emotional growth, including cooperation, self-confidence, and taking responsibility for one’s own reasoning.
A Night in the White House – Janet Koske
In a narrative poem, Koske imagines President George Bush falling asleep at his desk and being visited by Seymour Papert, who teaches him basic turtle commands and the philosophy behind Logo-like, child-centered learning. The dream ends with an energized Bush waking to announce his commitment to learning computers and to education reform inspired by the encounter.
Remember When… – Uncredited
This retrospective section reprints pages from the very first issue of the newsletter, Volume 1 Number 1, from September 1982, including an early review urging readers not to miss Papert’s Mindstorms and its critique of entrenched educational practice. It also reprints Linda Nix’s original account of using Logo turtle graphics with fifth graders to reinforce geometric shape recognition for a state skills test.
Global Logo Comments – Volume 10, Number 1 – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Anne McDougall)
Harper reflects on ten years of compiling international Logo news, noting a troubling decline in large-scale Logo adoption in countries like the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Senegal since the mid-1980s. He introduces returning Australian editor Anne McDougall, who reports on the Fifth International Logo and Mathematics Education Conference held at Lake Tinaroo, Queensland, covering Logo pedagogy, recursion, and mathematics curriculum discussions.

Winter 1991/1992 (Vol. 10, No. 2)

From the Editor: Logo First … and then HyperCard – Sharon Yoder
Reflects on a recent Logo course that happened to include three teachers simultaneously enrolled in a HyperCard/HyperTalk class, describing how those students grew convinced that a solid grounding in Logo made their hypermedia learning far easier. Reaffirms Logo’s value as a first programming language even as hypermedia tools gain popularity in schools.
Quarterly Quantum: Do You Know a Logo Person? – Tom Lough
Opens with an anecdote about being called “a Logo person” by a stranger and uses it to launch a reader call-in project asking for descriptions of the qualities that define such a person. Closes with a postscript inviting readers to experiment with nested REPEAT commands to create geometric patterns.
Fourth Irish National Logo Contest 1990 – Michael D. Moynihan
Recounts the history and organization of Ireland’s National Logo Competition at St. Patrick’s College in Dublin, including its sponsorship by Cara Computers and the memorial trophy honoring founder Fred Klotz. Presents the five Elementary Division problems and the complete winning Terrapin Logo solutions written by twelve-year-old champion Gavin Hurley.
Beginner’s Corner: A Blizzard of Logo Ideas – Dorothy Fitch
Demonstrates how the Total Turtle Trip Theorem underlies a family of Logo snowflake procedures, building from simple star points to combined multi-armed flakes. Extends the idea into turtle-shape snowflakes and animated falling-snow procedures for both single and multiple turtles in LogoWriter and Logo PLUS.
Logo LinX: Pattern Microworlds and Microworld Patterns – Judi Harris
Presents a LogoWriter microworld built from turtle shapes modeled on intelligence-test blocks, letting children switch, move, and stamp block shapes to compose patterns and pictures. Includes procedures for saving and recalling completed pictures and an onscreen help page supporting independent use by young children.
Logo Ideas: Snow Thoughts – Eadie Adamson
Walks through a classroom’s collaborative development of a state-transparent snowflake “branch” procedure, then shows how adding a scale input let students generate flakes of varying sizes. Describes an offshoot “snowstorm” project in which students programmed multiple turtles to drift and pile up like snow in response to changing wind headings.
Windows on Logo: Pictograms – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Explores a classroom project that used Logo turtle shapes to build pictograms and bar graphs from a table of zoo animal counts, supplying StampRow and StampShape procedures for the task. Shows how the same class linked Logo to a videodisc player so that questions about displayed animal images synchronized with the graphed data.
Math Worlds: …beyond Piaget: Logo learning under a new light… – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Reports on ideas encountered at several international mathematics education conferences that challenge Piaget’s claim that development must precede learning, drawing on Vygotsky and Gattegno. Discusses findings from Hoyles, Noss, and Sutherland’s Microworlds Project on the crucial role of teacher intervention and classroom culture in Logo learning.
Sanity and the Single Computer (Part 1) – Judi Menken
Describes practical strategies for running a single-computer, child-centered primary classroom, covering physical layout, student computer monitors, and cue cards that support independent use. Provides sample LogoWriter startup, menu, and drawing programs that let even nonreaders manage the computer center on their own.
Extra for Experts: The John Wayne Theory of Learning Lists – Mark Horney
Proposes a sink-or-swim method for teaching high schoolers recursive list processing, in which students are handed a large set of unfinished list-function specifications and left to struggle toward working solutions. Lays out standards of “Truth” and “Beauty” used to judge the resulting procedures, from correctness to elegance and independence.
Logo: Search and Research: Higher-Level Math Thinking, Part I – Douglas H. Clements
Revisits the Atlanta-Emory Logo Project and reviews three learning theories—van Hiele levels, Skemp’s instrumental versus relational understanding, and the SOLO taxonomy—as lenses for interpreting students’ geometric thinking. Applies these frameworks to a ninth grader’s dribble-file record of solving the RHOMBUS MADNESS task.
Starting With Scribbles – Eleonora Badilla-Saxe
Draws a parallel between Lowenfeld and Brittain’s stages of children’s drawing development and the progression Costa Rican students show as they gain mastery over LogoWriter, from disorderly scribbling through preschematic and schematic designs. Illustrates each stage with examples of student artwork and discusses how laboratory directors can connect Logo projects to classroom curriculum.
Global Logo Comments: Reports From Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil, Japan and Israel – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jose Valente, Marie Tada, and Anne McDougall)
Compiles international dispatches showing Logo’s continued expansion in Latin America, including large-scale national computers-in-education projects in Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Brazil built around Logo. Adds an update on Japan’s forthcoming LogoWriter II software and a recap of Logo-related sessions from a Melbourne education conference in Australia.

Spring 1992 (Vol. 10, No. 3)

From the Editor – It’s Beyond Me! – Sharon Yoder
Yoder reflects on why Logo-using educators are rarely trained in computer science fundamentals, drawing parallels to gaps in teacher training for keyboarding and elementary math concepts. She urges Logo teachers to seek out computer-science mentors and recommends Brian Harvey’s Computer Science Logo Style series for deepening their technical understanding.
Quarterly Quantum – HOUSE Revisited – Tom Lough
Lough revisits the classic Mindstorms-era HOUSE procedure, describing how he modified its TRIANGLE and SQUARE components to generate branching, tree-like patterns. He frames the piece as an invitation for readers to periodically return to old, familiar procedures to discover new insights.
Beginner’s Corner – Introducing… Multiple Turtles – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch presents a scripted, hands-on classroom activity in which students role-play as numbered turtles to learn the TELL, ASK, WHO, EACH, and TURTLES commands. The column includes a full teacher dialogue, a pop quiz, backup code for versions lacking a TURTLES command, and ideas for classroom projects like turtle races and megashapes.
1991 ICPSC Logo Winners – Donald T. Piele
Piele reports the winning teams in the Elementary, Junior, and Senior divisions of the International Computer Problem Solving Contest’s Logo track, profiling the students and their advisors. He also explains how local contests are organized and previews the 1992 contest, including a new HyperTalk division.
ICPSC: Brian Harvey Responds – Brian Harvey
In a letter reprinted from correspondence with the editor, Harvey objects to Logo being segregated into its own division at a well-known problem-solving contest and demonstrates that Logo can solve the contest’s letter-drawing problems as elegantly as BASIC or Pascal. He walks through increasingly general, data-driven Logo solutions to argue that Logo deserves recognition as a serious general-purpose programming language.
Logo LinX – Logoed Mottos – Judi Harris
Harris recounts how she used Logo to help ISTE brainstorm a new organizational tagline, writing procedures that generate random word combinations from lists of nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech. She contrasts her own recursive permutation procedures with a more elegant and efficient solution offered by Brian Harvey for generating every possible combination.
Oops! – Uncredited
This item corrects bugs in the map-drawing program originally published in the December/January 1990/91 “Easy Map Drawing with Logo Writer” article, providing a working, tested listing for Macintosh Logo Writer. It reprints the corrected MAP, STARTDRAWING, COPYLIST, and PRINT.LIST procedures so readers can run the project without errors.
Logo Foundation Announced – Uncredited
This news item announces Seymour Papert’s creation of the nonprofit Logo Foundation, led by president Michael Tempel, with founding support from Logo Computer Systems and Logo Japan. It outlines the Foundation’s planned activities, including curriculum and staff-development projects, workshops, support for Logo user groups, and a new newsletter.
Logo Ideas – Dots!!! – Eadie Adamson
Adamson explores multiple approaches to drawing filled and unfilled circles in Logo, from early forward-and-back “fill.circle” techniques to placing dots at the vertices of rotating polygons to reveal concentric circular patterns. She extends the exploration into questions about polygon symmetry, machine-arithmetic errors with imperfect septagons, and hands-on classroom follow-up activities using pattern blocks.
Sanity and the Single Computer (Part 2) – Judi Menken
Menken describes her “super.draw” program, which lets young children independently save and reload their Logo Writer drawings using a simple single-keystroke save routine and labeled floppy disks. She reflects on how removing herself as the bottleneck for saving work freed children to set higher personal goals and revise their drawings more thoughtfully.
Windows on Logo – Hypermedia Links With Logo – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls show how to simulate hypermedia-style clickable buttons in Logo Writer by overlaying an invisible numbered grid on the screen and writing SETUP, NAME.BUTTONS, and CLICK.BUTTON procedures. They illustrate the technique with a solar-system microworld example and discuss enhancements using the WHEN command plus mouse or joystick input.
Math Worlds – …a conversation with Uri Leron…. – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Uri Leron)
Dawson interviews mathematician Uri Leron about his experience teaching abstract algebra using the ISETL language at a summer institute for high school teachers, where small-group discussion and guess-then-test programming activities replace traditional lectures. Leron argues that constructing mathematical objects through code, combined with peer discussion, helps students build genuine conceptual understanding rather than memorized procedures.
Extra for Experts – Escher’s Potato Stamps: A Microworld Programming Project – Y. S. Give’on, Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar, Rina Hadass
The authors describe a Logo programming project inspired by M. C. Escher’s potato-stamp tessellation game, guiding students from simple stamp-drawing procedures toward advanced metaprogramming techniques for generating and combining tiles. They present the completed project as a flexible microworld that lets students explore, decode, and create tessellations at varying levels of difficulty.
Search and Research – Higher-Level Math Thinking: Part II – Douglas H. Clements
Clements continues his discussion of the Atlanta-Emory Logo Project, reporting how students’ SOLO levels, van Hiele levels, and quality of mathematical understanding related to each other and to their Logo programming achievement. He concludes with several recommendations for helping students move from visual to descriptive, relational understanding of geometry through Logo.
Global Logo Comments – Reports from Australia, Asia, and Senegal – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Anne McDougall, Marie Tada, Fatimata Seye Sylla)
Harper introduces field reports from three continents: Anne McDougall surveys Logo’s more integrated, less conference-spotlighted presence at an Australian computers-in-education conference, Marie Tada describes multimedia Logo developments in Japan including the Findout software, and Fatimata Seye Sylla reports on Logo-based summer computer camps for Senegalese children and adults. Together the reports explore how Logo is spreading into broader educational and technological contexts worldwide.

Summer 1992 (Vol. 10, No. 4)

From the Editor: It’s Beyond Me! – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on the tenth anniversary of Logo Exchange, observing that ideas once considered radical among Logo educators have become mainstream in discussions of cooperative learning and school restructuring. She encourages readers to support colleagues embracing these newer movements and invites contributions for upcoming issues.
Letter to the Editor – Orlando Mihich
Responding to a claim by Jose Valente, Orlando Mihich argues that the trouble lies not with Logo but with how public schools are administered, describing oversized classes, bureaucratic burdens, and a lack of professional respect for teachers. He contrasts this with Sandy Dawson’s report of teachers being highly regarded abroad.
About This Issue’s Graphics – Judy Brandt
Judy Brandt explains how the Logo artwork featured throughout the issue was created by seventh-grade students at Forest Park Middle School in Franklin, Wisconsin, during a required nine-week Logo programming unit. She describes the pair-based design process that culminates in an original creation displayed at the school’s spring Fine Arts Fair.
Quarterly Quantum: What’s in a Word? – Tom Lough
Tom Lough explores obscure, word-game-style definitions related to “logography,” tracing its historical role as the origin of written communication. He playfully extends the idea to argue that Logo functions as an origin point for a new kind of thinking, and invites readers to submit invented definitions for made-up Logo-related words.
Logo Ideas: The Subject Is Art – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson examines the diminished role of art and imagination in an education system that privileges testable, factual knowledge, and describes classroom experiments using Logo Writer squares to cultivate students’ aesthetic sensibility. She also outlines LEGO TC Logo robotics projects in kinetic, optical, color, and light art that helped technophobic students engage with technology through creative expression.
Logo LinX: Logo — Context, Not Contents – Judi Harris
Written in response to a question posed by Gary Stager about whether Logo served as a “Trojan horse” for educational reform, Judi Harris argues that Logo functioned less as a direct cause of restructuring than as an early, tangible embodiment of contextual change already underway in schools. She contends that genuine transformation depends on educators’ conscious choices rather than on any single technology or product.
Beginner’s Corner: Light the Torch for Turtle Olympics! – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch presents a multidisciplinary classroom project tying the Summer Olympics to Logo programming, offering six turtle-based “events” such as hurdles, archery, diving, and a sprint race with sample procedures. The activity engages students across geography, math, art, and physical education while reinforcing basic turtle graphics skills.
*Logo: Massive Parallelism for the Masses – Mitch Resnick
This email announcement describes the release of *Logo (StarLogo), a massively parallel extension of Logo for the Connection Machine that lets nonexpert programmers control thousands of turtles at once to model emergent phenomena. It highlights example simulations such as ant colonies and traffic jams and credits the collaborators and organizations that supported the language’s development.
Math Worlds: Professionals Talking With Professionals — Is It Really Happening? – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Sandy Dawson reflects on tensions among university, professional-school, and classroom cultures, using Larry Cuban’s AERA presidential address as a lens to question whether genuine dialogue exists between researchers and practicing teachers. He invites readers to share how they have bridged this divide in their own professional settings.
Windows on Logo: Experiments With Language and Letters – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull demonstrate how Logo can be used to build letter-frequency analysis tools, walking through procedures that tally and graph the letters in a document such as the Gettysburg Address. They suggest extensions such as comparing texts across languages and using frequency analysis for simple cryptography exercises.
Search and Research: Knowing All the Angles — An Update – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
The authors report on research by Cope and Simmons showing that students, even after years of Logo experience, consistently struggle to correctly estimate turtle turning angles and instead rely on visual feedback over analytic reasoning. They discuss microworld interventions designed to address this confusion and offer recommendations for building stronger student understanding of turns and angles.
Extra for Experts: Ambitious Ambiguity – Mark Horney
Mark Horney describes an open-ended assignment in which advanced students design a complete Tic-Tac-Toe game system and competing player procedures, requiring them to negotiate shared data structures and interfaces before writing code. He argues that such “ambitiously ambiguous” assignments are intensive, collaborative, and creativity-building, and reshape the teacher’s role from lecturer to guide.
Paradigm Software Announces The Pearl Controller – Uncredited
This announcement introduces the Pearl Controller, a serial interface device that connects LEGO Interface Boxes to Macintosh computers for use with HyperCard or Object Logo 2.6, extending LEGO robotics control beyond Apple II and MS-DOS machines. It also describes new features in Object Logo 2.6, including background task processing and emulation of LEGO TC Logo.
Just for Beginners – Michael D. Moynihan
Michael Moynihan walks beginning Logo students in Ireland through building and generalizing a simple TRIANGLE procedure into a flexible master procedure that uses variables for size and angle to create multiple polygon-based designs. The piece emphasizes learning through incremental editing and experimentation rather than memorizing fixed code.
Boats, Bridges, and Bailiwicks – Edwina Walsh
Edwina Walsh describes a year-long Logo Writer curriculum built around quarterly themes of famous houses, bridges, and ships, in which students research, write histories, and create illustrated, interactive Logo Writer projects. The approach accommodates a wide range of prior programming experience while integrating research, writing, and Logo skills.
Pulling It All Together: A Logo Writer Game Project – David Rockwell
David Rockwell chronicles a five-week collaborative project in which students designed and built their own real-estate-style board games in Logo Writer, creating game boards, property cards, spinning-dice turtles, and programmed control keys. The project reinforced top-down programming, list and shape-table skills, and cooperative problem solving among student teams.
Probability Using Logo – Paul B. Clark
Paul Clark details a hands-on lesson in which fifth- and sixth-grade students use Logo’s RANDOM primitive to scatter dots inside a box on screen and compare the observed hit count to a mathematically predicted value based on area. The activity builds student understanding of probability, randomness, and area through direct experimentation and data collection.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jose Valente)
Dennis Harper introduces a report by Jose Valente tracing the history of Logo’s use with special-needs children, from early work with an autistic child in Edinburgh through extensive programs across Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina. The report describes how Logo has served deaf, visually impaired, physically handicapped, and cerebral palsied children as a tool for communication, learning, and intellectual development.

Volume 11 (1992–1993)

Fall 1992 (Vol. 11, No. 1)

From the (Guest) Editor: Logo Across the Curriculum – Mark Horney
Horney recounts a conversation with a district technology coordinator that challenged his assumption that Logo belongs only in elementary grades, and he argues that continuing Logo into middle school lets students build on programming skills rather than starting over with a new language. He proposes that Logo cultivates computer science thinking rather than mere programming syntax, and calls for activities that weave Logo throughout the curriculum at every grade level.
Election Information – Uncredited
This piece presents the 1992 SIGLogo officer election, including a mail-in ballot for president, vice president, and secretary. It also prints candidate statements from Marian Rosen, Chuck Friesen, and JoAnn Karaffa describing their backgrounds with Logo and their goals for the organization.
Letter to the Editor – Yanni N. Mahatras and C. Oliver Wellington
Two fourth graders from Cotuit Elementary School share that they created a Mother’s Day card using LogoWriter and sent a copy to the magazine. The editor thanks them for their contribution in a brief reply.
Quarterly Quantum: Back to Back – Tom Lough
Lough explores the long-neglected BACK command, contrasting it with FORWARD and showing three techniques students can use to make BACK work like a reverse forward, including turning the turtle around, using negative inputs, or writing a custom FWD procedure. He connects these techniques to lessons about adding and subtracting signed numbers.
Logo Ideas: The Great Penny Caper – Eadie Adamson
Adamson describes a collaborative online project in which students nationwide counted pennies and used LogoWriter procedures, developed with Michael Tempel and Gary Stager, to total and graph the results as histograms by year. She includes the full set of Logo procedures used to parse text from the page, tally totals, build a table, and draw the resulting histogram.
Twice Upon a Time – Judi Harris
Harris presents Logo procedures inspired by Victor Borge’s comedic inflationary number words, showing how to build homophone lists and an INFLATE procedure that transforms words like wonderful into twoderful. She illustrates the technique with a rewritten short story told entirely in inflated vocabulary.
Windows on Logo: An Electronic Logo Exchange – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Graham O’Neil
The authors trace the parallel histories of Logo and the ARPANET/Internet since 1969 and argue that electronic communication can complement print publications by sharing lengthy code without transcription errors. They introduce a proposal, developed with O’Neil, to establish a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to Logo discussion.
Poetry: To Cinquain Randomly – Robert Macdonald
Macdonald presents LogoWriter procedures that randomly assemble student-written lines into cinquain poems, letting children focus on crafting vocabulary rather than final formatting. He walks through the startup, random-pick, and build-up procedures and shares student poem examples produced with the program.
We’ve Come a Long Way, Folks! – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
Dawson reflects on changes in mathematics education research over the previous twelve years and reviews Raffaella Borasi’s book Learning Mathematics Through Inquiry. He walks through Borasi’s nine strategies for fostering mathematical inquiry and relates each one to familiar themes in Logo-based teaching.
A Logo Wave World – Dan Robinette
Robinette describes a Logo microworld called Wave World that lets physics students manipulate frequency, velocity, and amplitude to see how waves and wave addition behave. He outlines a five-day classroom sequence pairing lab exploration with debriefing discussions and reports that students grew confident explaining wave relationships.
Logo: Search and Research: Squares and Rectangles – Douglas H. Clements, Michael T. Battista, and Julie S. Meredith
The authors report findings from their Logo Geometry research project, showing how elementary students reason about squares and rectangles using visual versus property-based thinking. Through classroom dialogue with young children, they demonstrate that Logo activities help students attend to shape properties even before they grasp hierarchical classification.
Beginner’s Corner: Back to School – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch shares a detailed Logo drawing of a school created by a fourth grader and uses it to outline a full classroom project for measuring, scaling, and programming a building in Logo. She offers step-by-step guidance for dividing the task among student groups, from sketching and measuring to writing and combining subprocedures.
LEGO/Logo: Using Cooperative Learning Strategies – JoAnn Karaffa
Karaffa explains how she structures LEGO/Logo building and programming activities around cooperative learning principles such as positive interdependence and individual accountability. She details specific group roles and lesson sequences for both simple machine building and computer-controlled LEGO projects, including a program that impressed her school’s administration.
Global Logo Comments: Logo and Freire’s Educational Paradigm – Jose Valente
Valente describes Sao Paulo’s Genese Project, a large-scale effort led by educator Paulo Freire to bring Logo-based computing into the city’s public schools as an extension of Freire’s critical-consciousness pedagogy. He explains the project’s training structure and gives a classroom example of how Logo, word processing, and interdisciplinary themes combined in a seventh-grade unit on media and aging.

Winter 1992/1993 (Vol. 11, No. 2)

It’s Not as “In” to Be a Logo Advocate as It Once Was – Hob Brown
Brown reflects on why Logo’s popularity has waned despite a wealth of strong published research and books, tracing the decline partly to its tight association with constructivism and to the language’s dated editing and debugging tools. He offers six concrete suggestions for modernizing Logo, including better editors, help systems, object-oriented capability, and clearer control structures, so it can keep pace with contemporary programming languages.
Pictures in This Issue – Jandy Bird
Bird describes the technology lab routine at Conover Road School, where K-4 classes rotate through weekly LogoWriter sessions supported by classroom teachers and parent volunteers. She also notes how gifted and talented students use LogoWriter and Lego/Logo to pursue independent projects, providing context for the student artwork featured throughout the issue.
Velcro Logo – Tom Lough
Lough uses an anecdote about a father teaching his son to catch a baseball with an oversized glove, then a Velcro one, to illustrate the value of starting beginners with simple, forgiving tools. He argues that basic Logo commands like FORWARD, BACK, LEFT, and RIGHT serve as the “Velcro” that lets new users succeed early before tackling more advanced programming concepts.
Some Logo Trivia – Paul M. Wexelblat
Wexelblat shares little-known historical facts about Logo, including that Wally Feurzeig coined its name from the Greek word for “word” and that the first turtle was a radio-controlled robot named “Irving.” He also notes that Logo’s original working name was “Ghost,” implemented by Dan Bobrow in Lisp on a PDP-1 at BBN in 1966, and points readers to a fuller history in Feurzeig’s essay “The Logo Lineage.”
Flags of the World – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch walks readers through building a toolbox of Logo procedures—rectangles, stripes, bars, circles, stars, and triangles—that can be combined to draw the flags of many nations. She provides sample code for flags such as Austria, Italy, Japan, and Sudan, and suggests classroom extensions like researching additional flags, inventing new ones, and building a flagpole display.
It’s About Time! – Eadie Adamson
Adamson recounts how her students once built game counters as clock substitutes before tackling the harder problem of simulating a real digital clock using Logo’s label command and timed waits. She works through the logic needed to track seconds, minutes, and hours with rollover and zero-padding, and suggests further challenges involving 24-hour conversion and tapping a computer’s built-in clock or a robotics timer.
Tell Me in English—Not Logo! – Donna Rosenberg
Rosenberg describes a technique for teaching procedure writing in which students first describe a project entirely in English before translating those directions into Logo commands, using a house-drawing exercise as the example. She explains how this approach corrected a common misconception about the turtle continuing to move after a turn and helped fourth graders successfully generalize their procedures using variable inputs.
An Electronic Community – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls trace the history of in-person Logo conferences from the early 1980s through their decline, then present the newly formed comp.lang.logo Usenet newsgroup as an electronic successor that recreates the community’s chance encounters. They walk through a real newsgroup exchange about teaching a ten-year-old to program, including Rob Slade’s account of a student’s rapid progress, and explain how educators can gain Internet access to participate.
Exploring the CHAR Primitive of Logo Writer on Your IBM – Charles E. Crume
Crume explains how LogoWriter’s CHAR primitive can print special characters such as parentheses and symbols by their decimal ASCII value, and provides a CHARSET procedure that displays all 256 characters in a labeled grid on an IBM PC. He highlights useful characters the table reveals, including card suits, gender symbols, arrows, and the copyright mark, and shows sample commands that mix these characters into printed text.
African Textiles or The Weaving Turtle – Orlando Mihich
Mihich connects the geometric richness of African textile traditions—their colors, weaving techniques, and cultural significance—to the kind of pattern-making natural to Logo programming. He describes how his students created their own “woven” turtle graphics screens inspired by textiles from Zaire, Sierra Leone, Niger, and Ghana, developing their own color schemes rather than simply copying the source designs.
Will Logo Survive? – A.J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Alan H. MacLeod)
Dawson introduces graduate student Alan MacLeod’s personal account of rediscovering a dust-covered Logo manual and struggling to reconcile his classroom experience with the theoretical claims researchers have made for Logo. MacLeod traces how differing interpretations of Papert’s call to avoid “leaving the child alone” may explain Logo’s uneven classroom success, while Dawson closes with a postscript on new directions discussed at the Sixth Logo Mathematics Education Conference.
More Than 100 Colors Possible in Logo Writer – George Trombley
Trombley describes a technique using the SHADE primitive and a checkerboard shape to blend two LogoWriter colors together, producing far more than the program’s standard 15 colors. He provides a CUSTOM.FILL procedure that automates this blending and suggests using different shape textures on the Shapes page to create varied textured fill effects.
Squares and Rectangles: Related? – Michael T. Battista, Douglas H. Clements, and Julie S. Meredith
The authors present classroom dialogues in which second- and fifth-grade students wrestle with whether a square is a type of rectangle, revealing stages from purely visual reasoning to invented terminology like “special kind of rectangle” to genuine hierarchical understanding. They show how simple Logo procedure definitions, where SQUARE calls RECTANGLE with equal inputs, can help make the logical relationship between the shapes concrete for students.
Solving the Parallelogram of Forces Using Logo Writer – Orlando Mihich
Mihich presents three methods for finding the resultant of physical force vectors—graphical construction, trigonometric calculation, and a LogoWriter turtle-based approach—complete with working procedures for drawing vectors, resultants, and equilibrants. He extends the technique to multiple vectors and describes classroom activities, including building truss bridge models, that let students act as “architect-programmers” exploring the physics of structures.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Marie Tada and Hillel Weintraub)
In this installment of the international column, Asian correspondent Marie Tada interviews Hillel Weintraub about founding the Japanese Logo advocacy group S.M.I.L.E. in 1982 and his subsequent studies with Papert’s group at the MIT Media Lab. Weintraub reflects on the difficulty of building genuine “communities of learners,” his contrasting experiences at Harvard and MIT, and his ongoing efforts back in Japan to design classrooms centered on collaborative meaning-making rather than technology for its own sake.
Oops! – Uncredited
This brief correction notes that a graphic in Mark Horney’s “Logo Across the Curriculum” column from the Fall 1992 issue was printed scrambled and supplies the corrected version. It also provides a corrected code listing for the “results” procedure that had been given incorrectly in that issue’s Logo Ideas column.

Spring 1993 (Vol. 11, No. 3)

Logo Programming Style … again – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on encountering a beautifully designed but poorly coded set of Logo microworlds, using cryptic variable names and runaway embedded recursion to argue that teachers need at least a basic grounding in computer science and good programming style. She also welcomes retired teacher Robert Macdonald as a new columnist debuting his “Musings” column in this issue.
The Greater Scheme of Things – Tom Lough
Tom Lough discusses Scheme, a Lisp dialect he encountered at MIT and revisited when new Macintosh software arrived, as a possible alternative to Pascal for high school computer science courses. He suggests that Scheme, newly available for Macintosh, MS-DOS, and Atari computers, could build naturally on students’ prior Logo experience from elementary and middle school.
Turtle Morse Code – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch shows how to teach a Logo turtle to communicate in International Morse code by writing reporter procedures for each letter and using OUTPUT to return lists of DOT and DASH words. She then builds ENCODE and MORSE procedures that automatically translate typed words and messages into turtle-drawn, printed, flashing, or sound-based Morse signals.
Temperatures! – Eadie Adamson
Eadie Adamson describes how a gifted fourth grader used Logo procedures modeled as “machines” to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and back, building a series of chained functions and then reversing them to undo the conversion. He also created a visual thermometer display comparing the two scales, prompting Adamson to challenge readers to design a more accurate simulation that accounts for negative temperatures.
Counting Sequentially and Systematically – Kay Matsushige
Kay Matsushige presents a Logo activity in which students build compound polygons, such as four squares arranged around a point, using simple turtle procedures like FOUR.SQUARES and SQUARE. She explains how the activity can be extended into group challenges where students systematically count and identify all the shapes hidden within more complex composite figures.
My Favorite Kangaroo—A Study in Fascinating Fibonaccis – Robert Macdonald
Robert Macdonald introduces a math microworld built around a kangaroo named Koony who can only hop up one or two stairs at a time, having students tabulate the number of possible hopping combinations for stairs of increasing height. He shows how the resulting data reveals the Fibonacci sequence and provides a Logo Writer program that computes the sequence to check students’ hand-collected results.
The Star of David and the Spirit of Logo – Daniel Melman
Daniel Melman recounts how a group of teachers, while trying to draw a Star of David from two triangles, discovered an alternative way to define a TRIANGLE procedure that begins and ends at a shared connecting point rather than at a conventional vertex. He then generalizes this discovery into a PICTURE procedure with variable inputs for repetitions and turning angle, inviting readers to explore the resulting family of turtle drawings.
Screen Robots – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
Glen and Gina Bull explain how Logo Writer’s multiple turtles can simulate a LEGO-Logo traffic light and car before students ever touch physical LEGO hardware, using named subprocedures like RED, GREEN, and CAR in place of raw port numbers to make the control logic easier to read and debug. They walk through building the turtle shapes, wiring up a timing procedure, and combining the pieces into a TRAVEL procedure that cycles the light and starts and stops the car.
Logo Maths to LME – A.J. (Sandy) Dawson
Sandy Dawson reports on the Sixth Logo and Mathematics Education (LME6) conference at Simon Fraser University, weaving together plenary reflections from Janet Ainley, Celia Hoyles, and Uri Leron about the community’s evolution from a Logo-centered gathering into a broader mathematics-education network. He also describes the conference’s hands-on workshops covering software such as Boxer, Maple, Geometer’s Sketchpad, and Isetl.
I Know How to Move the Turtle—But What’s All This List Stuff? – John Gough
John Gough introduces beginning list-handling techniques in Logo, walking through procedures that build a list word by word, cycle items through a list with SENTENCE and BUTFIRST, and randomly combine words from separate lists to create silly sentences. He extends the idea to a “draw without replacement” procedure that mimics picking numbered balls from a bingo barrel, using MEMBER? to avoid repeating a previous choice.
Papert on Technology and Megachange – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
Douglas Clements and Julie Meredith recount a talk by Seymour Papert at the University at Buffalo contrasting how little classrooms have changed compared to fields like surgery and transportation, and exploring how children’s engagement with games like Nintendo and hands-on LEGO-Logo projects reveals a different, more informal kind of learning. They describe Papert’s speculation about a future “knowledge machine” that could reduce children’s dependence on traditional literacy, or “letteracy,” for acquiring information.
On Turtles and Cycloids: To SIN or Not to SIN – Daniel Melman (Featuring: Uzi Armon)
Daniel Melman builds on Uzi Armon’s turtle-geometry approach to cycloid curves, developing a progression of Logo procedures that draw cycloids using only turtle steps and turning angles rather than the SINE function. He then generalizes the procedures with separate step sizes for the rolling circle and the straight line, showing how varying these values produces shortened or elongated cycloid loops.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jose Armando Valente)
Dennis Harper’s international column features Jose Armando Valente’s report on the Third National Logo Congress in Petropolis, Brazil, which drew roughly 300 participants and highlighted new topics like Lego-Logo, 3D-Logo, and the cognitive aspects of recursion and metacognition. Valente notes a shift in the Brazilian Logo community’s focus from practical “how to” presentations toward deeper discussions of the Logo aesthetic and philosophy.

Summer 1993 (Vol. 11, No. 4)

First There Was Logo… – Sharon Yoder
This editorial traces Logo’s evolution from mainframe list processing through Apple II Logo, LogoWriter, Object Logo, and HyperCard, culminating in a preview of the forthcoming MicroWorlds. It highlights MicroWorlds’ new Centers-based interface, multiple mouse-controlled turtles, and parallel processing that leave the editor more excited than she has been about any Logo product in years.
Grandfather’s Ax – Tom Lough
This column uses the folk tale of a grandfather’s ax, whose head and handle are both eventually replaced yet still feels like the same tool, as a metaphor for how Logo procedures pass between students and get modified along the way. It encourages teachers to dig up old student- and teacher-written procedures and “repair” them rather than discard them.
101 Ideas for Logo (less 98) – Dorothy Fitch
This piece introduces Terrapin’s newly published project book by walking through three sample activities: drawing circles and butterflies using the Total Turtle Trip Theorem, building a Logo pyramid modeled on Egyptian construction, and generating invented words by combining prefixes with root words. It also outlines how the book’s five levels progress from simple shape drawing for beginners to recursive, list-based challenges for advanced programmers.
The Logo Writer World: The U.S.A. Map and Time Zones – Orlando Mihich
This article explains a classroom grid technique that helps students accurately trace and redraw maps in LogoWriter, then presents procedures for constructing a full U.S. map with coastlines and borders. It follows this with an interactive quiz program in which an animated turtle-plane flies between cities so students practice calculating time zone differences.
Let’s Get Rich: A Study in Big Numbers and the Power of Doubling – Robert Macdonald
This article recounts a colleague’s multi-year classroom project collecting two million bottle caps to make large numbers tangible, then follows a fourth-grade class’s attempts to write LogoWriter and BASIC programs that count to a million and beyond. It documents debugging help from Sharon Yoder, Eadie Adamson, and LCSI staff, and presents a doubling-savings program that lets students discover how quickly a dollar doubled daily grows into a million.
Logo Puts It All in “Perspective” – Nancy Flynn
This article demonstrates how Logo turtle geometry can teach art students one-point perspective by constructing a horizon line, vanishing-point triangles, and evenly spaced railroad-tie rectangles. It extends the technique to inscribing a three-dimensional cube within the triangle so students can see how objects appear when drawn at eye level.
LEGO Robotics in a Macintosh Environment – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
This column compares two emerging options for running LEGO-Logo robotics on Macintosh computers: LCSI’s forthcoming Control Lab and Paradigm Software’s adapter that lets existing Apple II kits work through Object Logo or HyperCard. It illustrates the Paradigm approach with a merry-go-round robotics project extended into a HyperCard control panel, highlighting the multidisciplinary skills the activity builds.
Journal Excerpts – A.J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Beth Mehrassa)
This column shares reflective journal entries written by graduate student and teacher Beth Mehrassa as she applied ideas from Raffaella Borasi’s book on inquiry-based learning to her mathematics teaching at a self-directed secondary school. The entries trace her shift away from lecturing toward listening to students, her experiments with alternative assessment, and her growing attention to students’ feelings about mathematics.
A Little Light on LEGO-Logo – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
This column reviews research studies on LEGO-Logo’s effects on students’ math achievement, motivation, self-esteem, and social interaction, including case studies of children inventing vibration-powered vehicles and line-following robots. It concludes that results largely mirror those found with standard Logo, showing modest but meaningful gains alongside a continuing need for classroom-based teacher research.
Preparing Teachers to Do Logo Research – Dennis Harper
This column describes how a Virgin Islands graduate program prepared three classroom teachers to conduct rigorous Logo research through intensive workshops, coursework, and literature review before each carried out an original study. It presents their findings from a high school comparison of Logo, Pascal, and BASIC, a middle school study of underachievers, and a kindergarten study of peer interaction and attention span.

Volume 12 (1993–1994)

Fall 1993 (Vol. 12, No. 1)

Weary of the Latest and Greatest? – Sharon Yoder
This editorial reflects on the wave of new commercial Logo versions arriving after years of dormancy, including MicroWorlds, PC Logo, and new Terrapin and Harvard Associates releases. It calls on the fractured Logo community to set aside rivalries over which version is “best” and instead embrace their shared enthusiasm for Logo.
First of All – Tom Lough
This column explores the Logo FIRST command through simple examples before building toward a custom INITIALS procedure that extracts the first letters of a word list to form acronyms. It closes with playful puzzles challenging readers to extend the procedure to ignore small words and to handle lists of sentences.
Renewal – Eadie Adamson
This Logo Ideas column revisits a classic flashing-sign classroom project built with the LogoWriter label command and shows how the same idea gains new depth in MicroWorlds through text boxes, hideframe and showframe, and parallel processing. It walks through concrete examples, including a diner sign that reveals a hidden “Food” sign and an animated “Eat” sign built letter by letter.
Anno’s Introduction to Factorials – Robert Macdonald
This Musings column uses Mitsumasa Anno’s picture book Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar to introduce children to factorials, then presents Logo procedures for computing them, including a recursive factorial function and a general-purpose “calculator” program. It also explores how the Macintosh LogoWriter environment shifts into scientific notation as factorial values grow enormous.
A Study of Factorials and Permutations … Continued – Robert Macdonald
This More Musings column extends the factorials discussion into permutations, using physical classroom simulations such as students seating themselves at a table or lining up for ice cream cones to build intuition. It then supplies a Logo program that generates all permutations of an entered list and applies it to word puzzles like SCRAM and LOOK.
Micro Worlds: A Review – Sharon Yoder
This review examines LCSI’s newly released MicroWorlds Project Builder, walking through its tool palette, its four object types (turtles, text boxes, buttons, and sliders), and its parallel-processing and multimedia capabilities. It weighs these strengths against limitations such as its Macintosh-only, 256-color requirement and the loss of some traditional Logo primitives.
“Arc”aelogical Digging – Dorothy Fitch
This Beginner’s Corner column teaches newcomers to build arcs from simple REPEAT loops of FORWARD and RIGHT or LEFT, then combines right- and left-turning arcs into bone shapes, inchworm patterns, and layered flower petals. It also introduces a single-keystroke KEYS procedure that lets students draw designs interactively by pressing R, L, C, and Q.
Gear Ratios—A Simulation – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
This Windows on Logo column builds a LogoWriter simulation of interlocking gears using two turtles, counters, and a Gear.Ratio variable, letting students explore how many turns one gear makes relative to another. It progressively adds Startup, Reset, and interactive Gears procedures, and discusses the simulation’s limitations compared to real, physically linked gears.
The Logo of My Dreams … A Review – John M. Sklar
This review praises Harvard Associates’ PC Logo 4.0 for MS-DOS machines, highlighting its speed, command-history buffer, built-in help system, and extensive printer support. It demonstrates the language’s multiple-turtle capabilities with sample procedures that use TELL, ASK, and EACH to animate six turtles simultaneously.
The Ellipse and Logo – Ken Large
This Extra for Experts column presents eighteen distinct Logo approaches to drawing ellipses, ranging from trigonometric formulas and distance-comparison methods to simulated gravity, orbital mechanics, and the classic string-and-two-pins construction. Each method is accompanied by working code and notes on how faithfully it reproduces a true ellipse.
Is Programming Obsolete? – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
This Logo: Search and Research column recaps a conference panel in which Andrea diSessa, Mitchell Resnick, and David Smith debated programming’s place in education, covering diSessa’s Boxer language, Resnick’s Lego-Logo “Whole Programming” philosophy, and Smith’s direct-manipulation alternatives to text-based coding. It closes by noting the panelists’ shared conclusion that programming retains real value but must be reconnected to students’ interests and other domains of knowledge.
Global Logo Comments – Dennis Harper
This column reports on the many Logo-related research papers presented at the 10th International Conference on Technology and Education at MIT, drawing on studies from Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Australia, and Israel. Topics discussed include cross-cultural barriers to Logo implementation, children’s understanding of angle, preschoolers’ cognitive development with Logo, and LEGO-Logo control systems for students with learning difficulties.

Winter 1993/1994 (Vol. 12, No. 2)

Deep Learning and Problem Solving – Sharon Yoder
Yoder reflects on a summer of teaching intensive desktop-publishing courses and how deep immersion in software fostered independent problem-solving among her students. She draws a parallel to Logo education, arguing that superficial familiarity prevents users from tapping its deeper power and urges educators to pursue deeper mastery of Logo.
Where Is the Spirit? – Tom Lough
Lough recounts his years-long personal quest to find “The Spirit of Delta,” an airplane purchased by Delta employees as a gift to their company, and describes finally locating and boarding the plane one night in Hartford. He uses the story as a metaphor for his own ongoing search for the spirit of Logo in the enthusiasm of teachers and students who use it.
A Case of Curiosity – Eadie Adamson
Adamson describes enlarging a MicroWorlds MazeMaker project for a visually impaired student and discovering that a project’s procedures alone rarely reveal how it works. She offers a checklist of tools, including buttons, sliders, turtles, colors, shapes, page names, and text boxes, that teachers and students can use to investigate and reconstruct existing MicroWorlds projects.
Print Page: A Logo Writer Tool Procedure for Printing Logo Writer Programs – Charles E. Crume
Crume presents PP, a LogoWriter tool procedure that inserts a page name, date, and child’s name as a running header throughout a printed program listing. He explains PP’s underlying mechanism, supplies its full source code, and gives usage examples for loading it as a tool procedure.
Mother Goose Comes Alive – Dorothy Fitch
Fitch walks through building an animated, musical rendition of the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” in Logo, combining custom shapes, turtle animation, and note-by-note music procedures. She shares the complete code for the tune and describes techniques for positioning and animating the cat, cow, dog, dish, and spoon.
Pythagorean Theorem – Valerie Rosenthal
Rosenthal presents a Logo activity in which students use FORWARD, RIGHT, and ARCTAN to construct right triangles and verify the Pythagorean theorem from randomly generated leg lengths. She extends the activity to special 45-45-90 and 30-60-90 triangles, showing how Logo procedures make the relationship between sides and angles visually concrete.
I Love a Mystery – Robert Macdonald
Macdonald describes a language-based Logo microworld in which a “mystery” procedure’s keywords double as the names of procedures containing clues, so typing a word from the story reveals part of the solution. He provides sample code and reports that the activity’s group-writing and independent-entry format worked especially well with capable, independent students.
Maria Montessori, Meet Seymour Papert – Elizabeth Early Feller
Feller imagines a meeting between Maria Montessori and Seymour Papert and describes having her students recreate Montessori’s classic Pink Tower material using LogoWriter procedures involving variables and recursion. She details common student errors in the project, such as mispositioned shapes or an out-of-control recursive call, and provides sample procedures for both correct and flawed versions.
Electronic Coordinates – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls introduce Cartesian coordinates through Logo’s XCOR, YCOR, and ROUND commands, then apply this foundation to build an electronic version of the game Battleship on a turtle-drawn grid. They supply procedures for moving the turtle across the board, reporting its position, and firing at hidden ship coordinates, complete with hit and miss sound and shape feedback.
Logo Robotics: Robotics in an Integrated Curriculum: Children’s Investigations of Mechanical Advantage With LEGO/TC logo – A.J. (Sandy) Dawson (Featuring: Marion Barfurth and Susan van Gelder)
Barfurth and van Gelder describe a five-month, cross-curricular LEGO/TC logo robotics project in which fourth- and fifth-grade teams designed and built machines demonstrating mechanical advantage, such as a fan and a drawbridge. They contrast the differing dynamics of two closely observed teams and present transcript excerpts showing students reasoning mathematically about gear ratios while collaborating on their inventions.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid – Mark Horney
Horney introduces “Logo-Engineered Artificial Life Forms” (LEALFs), showing how a Logo procedure for a sample creature named Fred generates graphical faces from parameter lists analogous to DNA. He proposes extensions involving variation, reproduction, and evolution of these creatures, encouraging students to explore biological concepts such as ontogeny and phylogeny through Logo programming.
A Research-Based Logo for Mathematics – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
Clements and Meredith describe the design of Geo-Logo, an NSF-funded Logo environment built on research-based principles for teaching geometry, including tools such as an on-screen protractor, a linked Command Center, and combine and repeat advice features. They explain how each design decision draws on research about students’ understanding of turns, angles, and the relationship between symbolic code and visual drawings.
Global Logo Comments: Computers in Education: Shifting the Pedagogical Paradigm From Instructionism to Constructionism – Dennis Harper (Featuring: Jose Armando Valente)
Valente contrasts instructionist and constructionist uses of computers in education, arguing that Logo’s programming environment lets students “teach” the computer rather than simply be taught by it. He connects this constructionist approach to Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of learning and describes examples from Brazil and other Latin American countries where Logo-based constructionism has been implemented at scale.

Spring 1994 (Vol. 12, No. 3)

Logo-A Garden for the Mind – Dorothy Fitch
This guest editorial builds an extended gardening metaphor for the many ways Logo can be used, from utilitarian “vegetable garden” tool-building to unplanned “wildflower” exploration to carefully designed formal projects. It illustrates the idea with two real classroom examples, Cathy’s evolving star drawings and Freddie’s boat designs, showing how ideas planted early can resurface and mature over time.
The Little Toolmaker: “Dad, can you help me?” – Tom Lough
This column recounts a personal story of the author and his ten-year-old son fashioning a homemade triangular-tip screwdriver to open a toy whose screws resisted ordinary tools. It draws a parallel between this hands-on toolmaking and the way students create and share their own Logo procedures as tools for solving specific problems.
Logo Garden Tools – Dorothy Fitch
This Beginner’s Corner column presents Logo code for drawing flower petals and shapes, then shows how Terrapin Logo PLUS’s multiple-turtle commands, LTURTLES and CTURTLES, can arrange turtle shapes into rows and circular garden patterns. It further suggests ways to animate a Logo garden scene with random growth, changing weather, a hovering hummingbird, and pen-pattern brick walks and lattice archways.
Logo Procedures for Paralyzed Children – James Blodgett
This article explains how adaptive switches paired with a rotating “arrow cursor” turtle let severely paralyzed children draw, select icons, and communicate by choosing symbols on a switch-controlled board. It supplies complete Logo code for several versions of the technique, along with guidance on adjusting speed and adapting the procedures across different Logo dialects.
Junk Mail-It’s All Around Us – Robert Macdonald
This Musings column describes a classroom discussion of personalized junk mail that leads students to examine how such letters are generated. It presents two LogoWriter programs, an interactive “conversation” demo and a “junkmail” letter generator, that teach variables, print formatting with the word primitive, and top-down procedure design.
Graphics in This Issue: LogoPOGs – Sandra Siu
This piece describes guiding sixth-graders in a rural Hawaii school through a Logo unit culminating in designing “LogoPOGs,” artwork modeled on the popular milk-cap POGS game, using Apple Logo and the LOGOGRAF Picture tool. It reflects on the varied problem-solving strategies students used and reports that nearly all participants found the project fun, educational, and confidence-building.
A Case of Curiosity: Part Two – Eadie Adamson
This Logo Ideas column continues an account of reverse-engineering MicroWorlds’ Maze.Maker microworld to build an enlarged, accessible version for a visually impaired student. It walks through the detective process of discovering how frozen turtles, shape copying, and click-triggered procedures worked, including the pick-and-place and adjust code used in the finished project.
Using Logo to Teach: The Case of Triangles With Unequal Sides – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, Margie Mason
This Window on Logo column recounts how a teacher-education student’s question about drawing a scalene triangle prompted the authors to derive its unknown side and angles using the sine, cosine, and arctangent functions in Logo. It traces several revisions of a Scalene procedure and reflects on how such tinkering with Logo can complement, rather than replace, traditional mathematics instruction.
Using Logo Writer to Tune Turtles and Make Sweet Music – John Gough
This article explains how LogoWriter’s TONE primitive can be combined into procedures to play melodies, and details experiments the author conducted to correct a published frequency table whose higher notes had been sounding progressively flat. It also offers procedures for nonmusical sound effects and for pairing printed lyrics with turtle-shape animation so the turtle appears to “sing.”
Hypermedia Design-Dynamic Information Management – Jandy Bird
This article describes introducing elementary resource-room students to LogoWriter’s Hypermedia Tool, contrasting the rigid, hierarchical structure of a traditional database with the flexible, button-linked organization of hypermedia cards. It explains how students first mapped their topics, such as the Bermuda Triangle, as idea webs before building and linking their hypermedia pages.
Hands-On? – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
This Logo: Search and Research column reports on a study comparing teachers who learned Geo-Logo with full hands-on computer access against a group that first studied the manual alone in a separate room. It finds that the manual-only teachers, despite feeling less satisfied with their learning experience, referred to the manual more and performed comparably or better on a subsequent project, raising questions about how much on-computer time is truly optimal.
The Turtle Takes a Cab – Kara Ryan, SSND, and Ralph Olliges
This Math Worlds column introduces Taxicab geometry, a non-Euclidean system in which distance is measured along a city-block grid rather than a straight line, and shows how it naturally maps onto the Logo turtle’s coordinate plane. It provides Apple Logo procedures, TAXIDIST and TAXIBETWEEN, that let users input two points and see the taxicab distance and “betweenness” region calculated and displayed on screen.

Summer 1994 (Vol. 12, No. 4)

Discouraged? … Don’t Despair! – Sharon Yoder
The editor reflects on freshman students’ lukewarm reactions to Logo and on teachers abandoning Logo for hypermedia tools, then finds hope in a colleague’s excited discovery that Logo is “a grown-up’s programming language disguised as a kid’s toy.” She also announces that two long-time columnists are departing and appeals to readers to contribute articles to sustain the publication.
It’s All Relative – Tom Lough
The author recounts students’ surprise at how LEFT and RIGHT commands follow the turtle’s own body orientation rather than the observer’s viewpoint. He draws a parallel to teaching, urging educators to consider a student’s frame of reference before judging an unexpected response as wrong.
An Adventure in Logo – Dorothy Fitch
The article walks through Terrapin’s new Crystal Rain Forest adventure game, describing how its story-driven puzzles (Robot Temple, Garden Bridges, Monkey Puzzle, and others) progressively introduce turtle movement, angles, REPEAT, and procedure definition. It highlights how the game culminates in a simplified “Crystal Logo” environment where students design their own crystal graphics.
The Crystal Rain Forest – Irene Smith
This review evaluates Terrapin’s Crystal Rain Forest software, praising its adventure-game premise, tasteful sound design, save/print features, and embedded environmental message. It cautions that while the program is an engaging introduction to basic Logo commands, it should be treated as a stepping stone rather than a complete Logo curriculum.
Logo Collaboration – Mark Steinberger
The author describes building a number-line game with third and fourth graders as a collaborative, iterative process, presenting it to the class as an unfinished work in progress across seven revisions. He argues that separating creative idea generation from the mechanics of code-writing lets children participate meaningfully in software design without needing full programming mastery.
Color Displays and Hypermedia – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Chris Appert
The authors trace a mysterious LogoWriter crash on Macintosh computers to monitor color settings exceeding 256 colors, and report that LCSI has no plans to fix the incompatibility. They then use custom Spectrum and ColorBlocks procedures to chart and explain LogoWriter’s underlying color-numbering scheme and its relation to RGB color theory.
Using Computers in Summer Fun in the City – Eileen Boyle Young
This piece details a two-week inclusive recreational program pairing special- and regular-education campers with LogoWriter and KidPix activities, including thank-you notes, geometric shape drawing, and starry-sky procedures tied to field trips. It closes with recommendations for improving future sessions, such as shorter lab periods and integrating computer use throughout the day.
Teaching With Logo Means Being on the Cutting Edge – A. J. (Sandy) Dawson
In his farewell Math Worlds column, the author connects contemporary mathematics-education reform literature (Battista, Hoyles and Noss, Burns) to lessons Logo educators already learned about teacher belief, situated learning, and letting children invent their own methods. He suggests Logo teachers are well positioned to lead the broader reform of mathematics teaching.
Viewing the RIGHT Way: A New ANGLE on Quilting With Logo – Jody MacQuillan
The article presents an eight-phase lesson in which fourth graders first design half-square quilt patterns from paper triangles and then recreate their designs on screen using LogoWriter’s multiple-turtle capabilities. It links the activity to Nebraska pioneer history while building observation skills, geometry understanding, and Logo procedure-writing.
King Arthur Had a Daughter – Robert Macdonald
The author revisits the classic “King Arthur’s Problem” counting puzzle, guiding readers through manual elimination methods, powers-of-two patterning, binary notation shortcuts, and multiple Logo and BASIC programs that compute the surviving knight’s chair. He credits correspondence with Ihor Charischak for a more elegant binary-based solution technique.
How About a Standard Logo Lexicon? – David P. Kressen
Noting inconsistent terminology across Logo manuals, the author proposes a standardized lexicon of terms such as program element, procedure, command, reporter, and control structure. He includes a diagram mapping the relationships among these concepts to help teachers communicate more clearly across different Logo dialects.
Learning by Design – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
The authors compare two studies, Harel’s instructional-design project and Kafai’s game-design project, in which children created Logo software to teach fractions to younger students. They conclude that designing instructional software fostered deeper, more personal understanding of fractions, while designing games was especially effective for building programming skill.
BK to Russia – Dennis Harper
Harper reports on his return to Russia after a decade, describing the Institute of New Technologies’ translation of LogoWriter and MicroWorlds and its teacher-training workshops that have brought Logo into roughly 100 Russian schools. He credits mathematician Sergei Supronov’s sustained efforts as central to expanding Logo’s presence despite the country’s broader turmoil.

Volume 13 (1994–1995)

Fall 1994 (Vol. 13, No. 1)

Where Did the Summer Go? … And How Logo Has Changed – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on a summer disrupted by her mother’s illness and death, and how that experience of slowing down shaped her thinking about the ongoing rift between “Logo purists” and “Logo futurists.” She argues that both camps should appreciate the richness each version of Logo brings to the classroom rather than arguing over which form is superior.
Making Connections – Tom Lough
Tom Lough presents classroom activities in which students write individually named Logo procedures and reporters that can be strung together into class “superprocedures,” first for drawing connected figures and then for chaining mathematical functions. He suggests using these connected procedures as a springboard for classroom discussion about how people and ideas are linked to one another.
“L”egant and “L”ementary Designs – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch experiments with a simple turtle procedure that draws the letter L and then combines copies of it into star shapes, “innie” and “outie” pairings, and nested-repeat patterns that resemble tessellations. She encourages readers to tinker with the FORWARD and rotation inputs themselves to discover new geometric designs from one small starting shape.
Palindromes: What Are They and What Can We Do With Them? – Robert Macdonald
Robert Macdonald outlines a cooperative-learning microworld in which students search for and generate numeric palindromes for the numbers 0 through 99 by reversing and adding digits, recording their findings on number and data charts. He supplies a LogoWriter program that automates the reversal-and-addition process and discusses patterns such as multiples of 11 and the notorious 24-step palindrome for 89 that emerge from the data.
“The Game’s Afoot!” or “It’s Still a Mystery to Me” – Christine A. Johanek
Christine Johanek describes a Logo program called VILLAGE.MURDERS that she built to accompany a classroom reading of Agatha Christie’s “Village Murders,” in which students type in clue names that, if correct, draw a graphic reminder of each clue. She explains how the activity sharpens students’ powers of observation and deduction and suggests follow-up activities such as writing original mystery stories with matching clue-drawing programs.
Logo Animation: A Lesson in Active Learning – Kathleen H. McClaskey
Kathleen McClaskey describes a three-week Logo PLUS project in which eighth graders design a background landscape, then create and animate their own custom turtles to bring a scene to life. She reflects on how the project’s peer-coaching approach and hands-on ownership boosted self-esteem and academic confidence, especially among at-risk students.
Turtle and Coordinate Geometry in an Elementary Environment – Robert Macdonald
Robert Macdonald compares body-centered turtle geometry with absolute Cartesian coordinate geometry and walks through Logo primitives such as setpos, xcor, ycor, setx, and sety for locating points in all four quadrants. He offers several sample programs, including quadrant-based sailboats, randomly placed squares, and a “follow the dots” grapher, that let students practice combining turtle and coordinate approaches.
Visible Variables – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Chris Appert
Glen Bull, Gina Bull, and Chris Appert demonstrate how MicroWorlds slider and button controls can make normally invisible Logo variables visible and adjustable, walking through examples that control the side length of a Square procedure and the length and angle inputs of a recursive Squiral procedure. They show how watching a slider move as a procedure runs gives students a dynamic, concrete window into how variables change over time.
Have Some Fun With Recursion … – John Gough
John Gough introduces recursive Logo procedures through a long series of playful examples covering rosettes, growing spirals, embedded recursion, musical tones, moving labels, and probability experiments like coin tosses and random letter picking. He repeatedly shows how adding a conditional test can control an otherwise endless recursive procedure, encouraging readers to experiment with their own stopping conditions.
Papert Revisits “Powerful Ideas” – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
Douglas Clements and Julie Meredith report on a keynote Seymour Papert delivered in Singapore, in which he argued that education should be rethought around technology rather than the reverse and reflected on which mathematical ideas, like parabolas and number bases, are taught mainly because they were convenient in a paper-and-pencil era. They recount Papert’s discussion of feedback as a powerful, body-syntonic idea illustrated by turtle navigation and successive-approximation math, along with classroom project examples such as programs on fruit fly life cycles and slug anatomy.

Winter 1994/1995 (Vol. 13, No. 2)

Discouraged Again… – Sharon Yoder
The editor reflects on her discouragement after finding that experienced Logo educators at a conference had never heard of MicroWorlds, then describes how a student-designed issue cover and MicroWorlds’ Software of the Year award lifted her spirits. She closes by urging readers to keep advocating for Logo whenever colleagues assume it has been superseded by newer hypermedia products.
When Is RANDOM Not Random? – Tom Lough
This column explains how the RANDOM primitive works and demonstrates its use in turtle-graphics procedures and sound-generating programs, including how to shift its output range with simple addition. It also touches on RERANDOM and how some Logo versions can reproduce identical “random” sequences if the generator is reinitialized the same way.
My Turtle Speaks Semaphore! – Dorothy Fitch
This Beginner’s Corner column walks through designing a project in which turtles are taught to display semaphore flag signals for each letter of the alphabet, detailing the planning decisions behind using multiple turtles, turtle shapes versus turtle-drawn flags, and heading adjustments. It concludes with a SIGNAL procedure for spelling out words and suggestions for extending the activity into group and off-computer classroom work.
Scissors, Paper, or Rock: An Adventure in Probability – Robert Macdonald
This Musings column explores probability theory through the classic three-player hand game, calculating the permutations behind each possible outcome to show why one player has a built-in statistical advantage over the others. It provides a Logo Writer program for playing the game on the computer alongside a worksheet for tallying results by hand in the classroom.
The Printing Turtle Exhibited – Orlando Mihich and his students
This feature recounts a seventh-grade class’s project recreating Ashanti adinkra cloth-stamp designs as Logo turtle-graphics screens, following the students from initial research through an after-school computer club to a public exhibition at a Harlem bookstore. It includes numerous student artworks with personal reflections, sample Logo procedures for drawing the stamp patterns, and background on the cultural meaning of adinkra symbols.
An Addendum to King Arthur’s Daughter – Robert Macdonald
This More Musings column shares a simpler algorithm, contributed by reader Professor Howard Peelle, for solving the Josephus Problem previously discussed in an earlier “King Arthur Had a Daughter” column. It reproduces Peelle’s Logo Writer procedures and points to a related article on computer solutions to the associated binary-card problem.
Micro Worlds and Multimedia – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Kim Joyce
This Windows on Logo column provides a step-by-step tutorial for building a branching hypermedia adventure story in MicroWorlds, covering page creation, the Shapes center, hyperlinked icons, and text boxes, all without using any turtle graphics commands. It also highlights MicroWorlds’ multimedia features, such as music, recorded sound, and animation, and suggests ways to manage the project as a classroom activity.
Logo Recursion and Repetition: What’s the Difference? Why the Fuss? – John Gough
This article distinguishes tail recursion from embedded recursion and compares recursive procedures against equivalent REPEAT-based versions to show why they can produce strikingly different results. Using spiral, triangle, and shrinking-spiral examples, it demonstrates how embedded recursive calls “remember” and later execute trailing commands in reverse order.
Notes From NECC’s Logosium – Douglas H. Clements and Julie S. Meredith
This Logo: Search and Research column reports on discussions from a NECC conference symposium on Logo, covering participant comments about mathematics assessment, standardized testing, and the tension between “instrumental” and “relational” approaches to teaching mathematics. It also describes a session on action research, outlining a three-part process teachers can use to study their own classrooms.

Spring 1995 (Vol. 13, No. 3)

The Logo Generation – Sharon Yoder
Sharon Yoder reflects on teaching undergraduate students who grew up during the height of Logo’s popularity in schools, yet finds that nearly none of them recall using Logo and many express deep anxiety about technology despite having some computer experience. She closes by sharing a list of her favorite videotapes that explore visions of future technology, which she uses to spark students’ imaginations in her teacher-education course.
To Gather Again – Tom Lough
Tom Lough draws on the experience of his college class reunion to reflect on the history of Logo gatherings, from the original Logo ’84 conference at MIT through regional East and West Coast Logo conferences and various institutes. He looks ahead to Logosium ’95, a preconference event at NECC in Baltimore, as an opportunity for the Logo community to reunite again.
The Grammar Minefield – Survival Techniques for Students – Christine A. Johanek
Christine A. Johanek describes GRAMMAR.DRILL, a Logo program she built for her high school English students that randomly generates sentences, often nonsensical, for students to practice identifying parts of speech. She provides the underlying Logo procedures, including ones that invent nonsense nouns and verbs, and explains how the drill reinforces grammar clues taught through class discussion.
Logo Charts and Graphs – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch demonstrates how to build pie charts, bar charts, and line graphs in Logo PLUS for the Macintosh, walking through the underlying procedures step by step. She illustrates each technique with real data she collected herself, including vehicle types and license-plate states spotted on a road trip and years of backyard bird-species counts.
Control-Key Events: Exploration and Inspiration – John Gough
John Gough investigates Logo’s obscure when, char, and ascii primitives, tracing his own exploration from confusion about their purpose toward discovering practical uses. He ultimately shows how control-key events can be programmed to insert accented characters, letting LogoWriter be customized to type in French, Spanish, and other languages.
It’s Winter: Let’s Build A Snowman – Robert Macdonald
Robert Macdonald recounts developing a LogoWriter snowman-drawing project with a fourth-grade class, building the figure step by step through circle, body, head, face, hat, and button procedures adapted for Macintosh and Apple II computers. He pairs the programming activity with student-written winter poems and suggests extensions such as an animated rabbit and a companion Logo house procedure.
What’s New With Logo PLUS 2.0 (for the Mac)! – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch surveys the new features added in Logo PLUS 2.0 for the Macintosh, including full color support, built-in music commands, rotating and flippable shapes, and a set of autoloading tool files for graphics, math, and text. She also highlights the expanded documentation package and new sample games bundled with the release.
Meet Logo Writer’s Four Turtles – John Gough
John Gough explains how LogoWriter’s four independent turtles can be activated and controlled using the tell, tell all, and each commands, offering sample procedures that animate multiple turtles simultaneously. He demonstrates techniques such as scrolling labels and lightning-bolt effects, then challenges readers to adapt the multi-turtle procedures back into single-turtle versions.
Animation – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Todd Kent
Glen Bull, Gina Bull, and Todd Kent show how MicroWorlds can emulate sprite-style animation without special hardware by assigning repeating instructions to turtles through the shift-click dialog box. They walk through building a sailboat that tacks across a lake, a bird that alternates between two wing shapes to appear to fly, and a multi-turtle train whose cars follow an engine.
Looking Back and Looking Forward – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama (Featuring: Richard Noss and Celia Hoyles)
Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama review research by Richard Noss and Celia Hoyles examining why unstructured Logo programming does not automatically produce mathematical learning, identifying obstacles such as unreflective tool use and avoidance of mathematical analysis. They add their own commentary on how Logo’s symbolic and feedback-rich environment can still uniquely support students in building intuitive, then more formal, mathematical understanding.

Summer 1995 (Vol. 13, No. 4)

A Long and a Short Journey – Sharon Yoder
The outgoing editor reflects on her twelve-plus years with Logo and her seven years leading Logo Exchange, tracing her path from an Apple II classroom to the editorship. She closes by passing the torch to Dorothy Fitch as the new editor.
Greetings – Dorothy Fitch
The incoming editor introduces herself, describing her path from music teaching through Kinderlogo and Terrapin to taking over Logo Exchange. She invites readers to send ideas, articles, and questions to help shape the journal’s future direction.
In Search of Seymour – Tom Lough
In this Quarterly Quantum column, the founding editor recounts an impulsive detour off the highway into a town named Seymour, where he explores its history of name changes. He finds an unexpected Logo connection when a young man he meets turns out to have learned Logo from a local sixth-grade teacher.
Egyptian Multiplication: An Ancient Algorithm for the Modern World – Robert Macdonald
This Musings column presents an ancient doubling-and-halving multiplication algorithm inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics, walking through worked examples and a verification method. It includes a LogoWriter program and worksheet that let students check their own arithmetic while practicing the technique.
A Monster of the Day – Laura M. Halleen
This article describes a language arts activity in which students split three-syllable animal names into head, body, and leg parts to generate a random “Friendly Monster” using Logo procedures. It extends the lesson with Shel Silverstein-inspired poetry, an interactive Logo questionnaire about each monster, and craft and writing follow-up activities.
Castles in the Sand – Dorothy Fitch
This Beginner’s Corner column presents a single-keystroke Logo program called CASTLE that lets young students build sandcastle scenes from square, tower, parapet, and flag building blocks. It walks through the underlying procedures and suggests extension activities like recreating classmates’ designs or adding new shapes.
LogoLand – Peggy Walkey
This whimsical fictional narrative imagines a girl named Peggy transported into a strange “LogoLand” where she must learn to communicate with a silent white turtle. Through trial and error she discovers Logo commands like FORWARD, BACK, and HIDETURTLE, framing basic Logo syntax as a fantastical adventure.
A Magnificent Figure-Making Machine – Robert Macdonald
This More Musings column builds up POLYGON and TWIRL procedures in LogoWriter to generate radiating geometric figures, then layers in background and pen color commands for visual variety. It shows how to combine multiple figures into an animated open-house display using recursion and a counter-based stop condition.
You Gotta Have a Gimmick – Jody Krupski
This article describes a foreign-language activity in which students enter their own vocabulary into LogoWriter list procedures to randomly generate French sentences for translation practice. It includes sample subject, verb, and object procedures along with a guided Logo program that walks students through creating and printing their sentences.
A Research-based Logo in the Classroom – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
This Logo: Search and Research column reports classroom findings from the Turtle Paths curriculum unit using Turtle Math (also called Geo-Logo), detailing how students combined and decomposed lengths while solving path and perimeter problems. It draws on classroom dialogue to show how the software’s dynamic feedback helped students build stronger connections between number and geometry.
A Dialog with a Computer – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Todd Kent
This Windows on Logo column explains how MicroWorlds’ ANNOUNCE, QUESTION, and ANSWER commands can be used to build dialog boxes and simple conversational programs. It demonstrates procedures for greeting users, asking their age, and checking a favorite color against a known list, while discussing how such programs could be extended to learn new responses.

Volume 14 (1995–1996)

Fall 1995 (Vol. 14, No. 1)

From the SIG-Logo President – Chuck Friesen
Chuck Friesen shares testimonials from Lincoln Public Schools, Nebraska teachers describing how Logo has helped students build confidence, problem-solving skills, and geometric understanding over twelve years of classroom use. He highlights the value of the Logo environment for special education students and reaffirms SIG-Logo’s commitment to supporting Logo-using educators.
From the Editor: New Directions in Logo – Dorothy M. Fitch
Dorothy Fitch introduces herself as the new editor of Logo Exchange, outlining her goals to feature practical classroom ideas and broaden contributor participation beyond the regular columnists. She thanks predecessor Sharon Yoder and previews new and returning writers, including Jim Muller, Nan Youngerman, and Ihor Charischak, who will contribute to this and future issues.
Quarterly Quantum: Coming Around – Tom Lough
Tom Lough experiments with random-movement Logo procedures that make a turtle seek hidden “food,” eventually creating a sidle procedure that causes the turtle to approach its goal along an indirect, transverse path. He draws a parallel between the turtle’s meandering progress and the often nonlinear ways students reach their own learning goals.
From Two to Three Dimensions – Jim Muller
Jim Muller describes classroom activities in which young students used Logo procedures to draw two-dimensional patterns, such as a soccer-ball net and boxes, that could be printed and folded into three-dimensional polyhedra. He recounts how the exercises helped children, including a Spanish-speaking student engaged through his love of soccer, develop spatial reasoning and discover concepts like the polyhedron.
What’s Your Bearing? Developing Directional Concepts Using SETHEADING – Kathryn A. Verzoni
Kathryn Verzoni presents paper-and-pencil and Logo microworld activities, including “Find the Treasure” and “Escorting the Governor,” that connect the concept of compass bearing to the setheading primitive. She explains how linking bearings to real-world navigation helps students in grades three through six distinguish setheading from relative turtle turns.
Cartesian Coordinates and Logo – Marian Rosen
Marian Rosen outlines a project in which students use setx, sety, and setpos commands to plan and draw initials or words on graph paper mapped to the Logo screen before programming them at the computer. She describes techniques such as a masking-tape targeting game and flashing multicolored line effects that help students internalize Cartesian coordinates while creating visually striking finished pieces.
Logo Action Research: Creating a Community of Teacher-Learners – Nan Youngerman
Nan Youngerman recounts the origins and structure of the Logo Action Research Collaborative, a national project begun in 1990 that guided roughly one hundred K-12 teachers through phases of question-framing, data collection, and analysis of their own Logo teaching practices. She reflects on how the collaborative fostered a supportive community of teacher-researchers and previews future articles on action research findings.
Roamer Turtle Now Available – Uncredited
This announcement introduces the Roamer robot from Harvard Associates, a battery-powered, dome-shaped floor robot with a keystroke touchpad that brings Logo commands to life for young children. It describes customizable color kits, a marker attachment for drawing, musical capabilities, and ordering information for the $299.95 device.
CLIME Notes: Council for Logo & Technology in Mathematics Education – Ihor Charischak
Ihor Charischak traces the history of CLIME from its 1986 founding through its affiliation with NCTM and recaps the organization’s 1995 annual meeting, which featured a Turtle Math demonstration by Doug Clements and Julie Sarama. He looks ahead to CLIME’s tenth-anniversary event in 1996 and outlines goals for increasing NCTM’s engagement with technology in mathematics education.
The Power of Two – Ihor Charischak
Ihor Charischak presents a paper-folding activity and accompanying Logo program that help students grasp exponential growth by charting how many folds it would theoretically take for a stack of paper to reach the moon. The included Logo PLUS program animates a growing tower of folded paper to visualize the doubling pattern.
Turtle CAD: Computer-Aided Design in Logo – Jim Muller
Jim Muller presents a Logo program that uses property lists to define three-dimensional points and shapes, such as a diamond and a car, which can then be expanded, magnified, and rotated along the xy, xz, and yz planes. He explains how the point, figure, rotate, and magnify procedures work together and reviews the underlying pprop and gprop property-list commands.
Logosium ’95 – Uncredited
This item recaps the second annual Logosium conference held in Baltimore, MD in conjunction with NECC, listing more than a dozen sessions on topics such as the LEGO DACTA Control Lab, MicroWorlds graphics, and the Programmable Brick along with their facilitators. It previews plans for the next Logosium at NECC ’96 in Minneapolis and invites session proposals.
Control Simulations (Part 1): Lamp and Temperature Sensor – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Todd Kent
Glen Bull, Gina Bull, and Todd Kent provide step-by-step instructions for building a simulated light bulb and thermometer in MicroWorlds, including creating on/off shapes, a toggle procedure, and a slider-based temperature display that rises when the light is switched on. They frame the project as the first installment of a series that will add a cooling fan and thermostatic control in future issues.
Logo: Search and Research: Delayed Effects of Logo – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama review research suggesting Logo programming produces delayed rather than immediate effects on students’ thinking, drawing on a longitudinal study comparing first graders who used Logo versus computer-assisted instruction drills. They present detailed interview transcripts showing how former Logo students developed distinctive, process-oriented conceptions of circles and angles that sometimes diverged from standardized test expectations.
Logo-L, a Logo Listserv – Michael Tempel and John St. Clair
Michael Tempel of the Logo Foundation and John St. Clair of the Global SchoolNet Foundation announce a new Logo discussion listserv, Logo-L, created to let Logo-using educators share ideas, ask questions, and collaborate on telecomputing projects. They provide instructions for joining either through the SCHL.SIG.LOGO newsgroup or by subscribing directly via e-mail to majordomo@gsn.org.
The Logo Forum on CompuServe – Uncredited (Featuring: Jim Muller)
This item describes the Logo Forum on CompuServe as a gathering place for Logo users of all backgrounds to discuss topics ranging from basic turtle graphics to fractals, list processing, and artificial intelligence. It highlights the forum’s sixteen libraries of downloadable Logo projects and papers, noting that Jim Muller serves as its facilitator.

Winter 1995/1996 (Vol. 14, No. 2)

From the Editor: Try Something New! – Dorothy M. Fitch
Dorothy Fitch reflects on John Holt’s book Never Too Late, drawing parallels between adult learning experiences, including her own return to playing cello at 40, and Papert’s ideas about learning in Mindstorms. She encourages readers to take up a new pursuit in the new year to reconnect with the challenges and rewards of being a beginner again.
Quarterly Quantum: In Praise of Apollo 13 – Tom Lough
Tom Lough reflects on the film Apollo 13, finding parallels between the crew’s docking maneuvers and Logo turtle commands. He highlights the film’s lessons on teamwork, creative problem-solving under pressure, and the importance of a strong background in science and mathematics for students.
Learning With a Ball of String – Jim Muller
Jim Muller describes hands-on activities using a ball of string, a chalk circle, and a nail-and-string board to physically model turtle graphics concepts like angles, direction, and shape. He shows how children can create curved-looking patterns from straight string lines, echoing the geometric ideas taught on the computer screen.
Creating a Commercial-Logo Style – Diane M. Manuel
Diane Manuel outlines her fifth-grade LogoWriter “Commercial Project,” in which students design a product and build a television-style commercial through separate shape, color, movement, sound, background, and text modules. She explains how each module builds on skills learned in earlier grades and culminates in a single combined procedure that runs the whole commercial.
From “Uh-huh” to “Ah-hah”: Logo in Action – Robert M. Berkman
Robert Berkman describes a sequence of Logo lessons for middle schoolers that begins with hand calculations to discover order of operations and progresses through writing procedures with variables, lists, and user input. He argues that these small “uh-huh” instructional moments build toward genuine “ah-hah” insights as students create increasingly interactive programs.
Countdown … With Robotics! – Manorama Talaiver
Manorama Talaiver describes Space Station 2000, a week-long summer program that used LEGO TC Logo robotics to integrate space science, physical science, and programming for gifted fifth and sixth graders. She walks through the day-by-day curriculum, from astronaut communication exercises to student-designed space station modules built with motors, lights, and sensors.
LEGO Lunar Landers – Michael Lipinski
Michael Lipinski presents two space-themed engineering challenges: designing a LEGO lunar lander capable of navigating obstacles, and an “Operation Egg Drop” activity that tests whether a protected LEGO lander can survive a fall. He suggests combining the two projects so students engineer landers that must both function on a simulated planet surface and withstand a reentry-style drop.
The Wonders of String Art – Jim Muller
Jim Muller extends the ball-of-string activity onto the computer screen, providing Logo procedures such as boxtop, curve, and pattern that recreate curve-stitch string art using straight turtle movements between coordinates. He shows how these procedures can be adapted to different shapes and explores a more elaborate circular string design procedure.
Turtle on Tour – Morton Goldberg
Morton Goldberg develops a general-purpose poly.tour procedure that sends the turtle around the vertexes of a polygon, performing a customizable action at each stop, without relying on trigonometric primitives. He uses this tool to build a gallery of intricate geometric designs, including star patterns, linked squares, a hex design, and a mandala.
High School Geometry Using Logo – Robert M. Packard
Robert Packard recounts how a casual challenge from a colleague led him to develop a full high school geometry course built around Logo exploration, covering topics from basic angles and the Cartesian plane through the Pythagorean theorem, analytic geometry, and transformations. He describes activities like drawing squares on triangle sides to visualize the Pythagorean theorem and having students name discovered theorems after themselves.
Control Simulations (Part 2): Fan and Thermostat – Glen L. Bull, Gina L. Bull, and Todd Kent
Glen Bull, Gina Bull, and Todd Kent continue their MicroWorlds control simulation series by adding a simulated fan and a thermostat to the lamp and thermometer built in the previous column. They walk through creating alternating fan-blade shapes, wiring the fan to cool the simulated thermometer, and programming a thermostat procedure that cycles the fan on and off around a set point, including a “hunting” behavior similar to real HVAC systems.
Logo: Search and Research: Does Logo Learning Increase Over Time? – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama review research showing that Logo’s educational benefits can grow stronger over time rather than fading, citing a longitudinal study where fourth- and fifth-grade Logo students later outperformed peers in middle school math. They also detail a study comparing Logo and manipulatives for teaching geometric motions, finding that Logo students retained and even improved their understanding on a delayed posttest while the manipulatives group’s scores declined.
Global Logo Happenings: The Use of Logo With Disadvantaged Children – Jose Armando Valente
Jose Armando Valente describes PROEM, a Brazilian educational program for disadvantaged “street children” in Brasilia that incorporated Logo, word processing, and spreadsheets within a constructivist, individualized curriculum. He argues that Logo activities gave these students an “intellectual signature” and helped teachers better understand each child’s cognitive development, while cautioning that computers alone cannot solve the deeper social problems facing this population.

Spring 1996 (Vol. 14, No. 3)

From the Editor: Spring Threads – Dorothy M. Fitch
Fitch introduces the issue’s three threads—exploring mathematics, investigating gender differences, and approaching new technologies—and previews each contributor’s article. She closes with a personal anecdote about writing a Logo program to generate a cross-stitch pattern of a turtle.
Quarterly Quantum: Turtles? What Turtles? – Tom Lough
Lough reflects on real-world turtles in peril, recounting stories of rescued snapping turtles and a roadside turtle saved by a passing motorist. He highlights the work of Carole Allen and HEART in protecting endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles through Turtle Exclusion Devices and a Turtle-Safe Shrimp Campaign, urging readers to help spread awareness.
The Recurring Question of Recursion – Jim Muller
Muller explains recursion to Logo newcomers through playful examples like a “get.through.life” procedure and a hands-on demonstration using stacks of numbered paper to model tail-end recursion. He contrasts tail-end and embedded recursion with the maze and amaze procedures and shows how a recursive c-curve procedure can generate complex fractal graphics.
Hundred Board Patterns – Ihor Charischak
Charischak presents a reprinted CLIME activity that frames times-table exploration as an imaginative journey to Ancient Greece, where students use hundred boards to discover patterns among multiples. He provides two sets of Logo procedures, one requiring students to manually determine which squares to erase and an automated version, for generating and overlaying times tables on screen.
Using Logo as a “Building Block” to Improve Spatial Abilities in Primary Grade Students – Nancy Flynn
Flynn describes teaching first graders turtle geometry with KidTool and Primary LogoWriter, noting that girls initially struggled more than boys with turtle orientation and spatial tasks. Drawing on a parent survey and prior research, she argues that limited exposure to building toys explains the gap and that Logo instruction can help close it.
A Circular Romp with Logo Triumphant – Robert Macdonald
Macdonald recounts a cooperative-learning event pairing high school math students with fourth graders to explore the meaning of pi through hands-on compass constructions and circle measurement. He then provides Logo procedures for drawing and erasing circles from the circumference, diameter, radius, or center, including an “Earth and Moon” orbit activity that reinforces the relationship between circumference and radius.
Turtle and Coordinate Geometry in a Secondary Environment – Medhat H. Rahim
Rahim presents a Logo module for secondary students that lets them input two angles and a common side to test whether a valid triangle results, then automatically solves and graphs it. He connects the activity to NAEP findings on students’ weak understanding of triangle angle relationships and lists the geometric properties the module is designed to reinforce.
Logo Action Research: Getting Teachers Excited About Technology – Nan Youngerman and Donna Cutler-Landsman
Youngerman and Cutler-Landsman describe how participation in the Logo Action Research Collaborative helped Cutler-Landsman investigate and address a motivation gap between boys and girls using LEGO TC Logo in her sixth-grade classroom. Her interventions, including mixed-gender groups and leadership roles for girls, increased girls’ engagement and led to broader recognition of her research at national conferences.
Recursion, the Problem Solver – Jim Muller
Muller demonstrates how recursion can solve a geometric problem: drawing a circle around a randomly generated triangle by finding the point equidistant from all three vertices. He walks through the Logo procedures for generating the triangle, calculating distances, and iteratively adjusting a candidate center point until the circle fits exactly.
Windows on Logo: Logo and the Internet – The Turtle and the World Wide Web – Glen L. Bull and Gina L. Bull
The Bulls reflect on fourteen years of writing this column and announce its upcoming conclusion, discussing practical difficulties of printing Logo code such as typographical errors and dialect incompatibilities. They propose the World Wide Web and CD-ROM as new distribution channels for Logo programs that could reduce errors and support reader submissions and feedback.
Logo: Search and Research: Parallel Programming – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Clements and Sarama explore Mitch Resnick’s research on MultiLogo and parallel programming, describing how students used multiple concurrent processes to control Lego robots such as a walking, flashing machine. They categorize the new kinds of bugs parallel programming introduces—problem-decomposition, synchronization, and object-oriented bugs—and suggest teaching strategies to help students master this style of programming.

Summer 1996 (Vol. 14, No. 4)

From the Editor: Carrying the Torch – Dorothy M. Fitch
The editor honors Tom Lough’s selection as a 1996 Olympic torchbearer and reveals his past as a U.S. Olympic modern pentathlete, while highlighting the CyberTorch educational project he helped launch. It also pays tribute to longtime columnists Glen and Gina Bull as they retire from writing Windows on Logo after fourteen years.
Quarterly Quantum: Let It Snow! – Tom Lough
Tom Lough presents a set of Logo procedures that draw snowflakes from lists of numbers representing the length of each spike on six identical spokes. He connects the classroom activity to how scientists interpret information encoded in real ice cores, encouraging students to guess a snowflake’s underlying number list just by observing its shape.
The Historical Turtle – Jim Muller
Jim Muller recounts the story of the 1814 Battle of Baltimore and the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then explains why Fort McHenry’s star-shaped design helped it withstand the British bombardment. He provides Logo turtle procedures that let students recreate the fort’s walls and ravelin fortifications.
Logo Workshops: Summer 1996 – Dorothy M. Fitch (compiler)
This compiled listing describes five summer 1996 Logo professional-development opportunities, including the Logosium event in St. Paul, the St. Paul Logo Project, a week at the Spence School in New York, the Stonington Retreat in Maine, and the Pepperdine University Summer Logo Institute led by Gary Stager. Each entry gives dates, costs, and contact information for educators interested in attending.
The Hudson River Project: Computing the Water Quality Index using MicroWorlds – Orlando Mihich and Students
Orlando Mihich describes how his Middle School 54 students monitor the Hudson River’s water quality, testing dissolved oxygen, pH, coliform bacteria, and other indicators, then use MicroWorlds programming to calculate the standardized Water Quality Index. The article includes the Logo procedures and dialog-box interface that let students click through each test to reach an overall water-quality rating.
Reaction Time: Fun with Robotics! – LEGO DACTA
This reprinted LEGO Dacta lesson guides students through the scientific method by building a LEGO TC Logo “reaction machine” that uses a light or sound stimulus and a touch sensor to measure response time. It offers programming code, classroom procedures for forming and testing hypotheses, and discussion questions about the brain’s role in reacting to stimuli.
Etchings: LogoWriter to MicroWorlds – John Gough
John Gough compares LogoWriter and MicroWorlds by attempting to build an Etch-A-Sketch-style, point-and-click drawing program in each environment, discovering that MicroWorlds lacks a clickable mouse primitive equivalent to LogoWriter’s button?. He documents his workaround using arrow-key input and an awkward click-first version of readchar, along with LCSI’s explanation for these design choices.
The Artillery Battle of Baltimore – Jim Muller
Jim Muller explores the physics behind the British navy’s failure to silence Fort McHenry’s guns, using Logo procedures that simulate a cannonball’s trajectory based on powder, angle, and gravity. He extends the model with an added friction factor and suggests further enhancements such as wind and ship-roll variables for students to explore.
Windows on Logo: The Last LX Column – A Retrospective Review – Glen L. Bull & Gina L. Bull
In their final Windows on Logo column, Glen and Gina Bull reflect on fourteen years of writing about Logo, tracing its evolution as a programming language, an educational philosophy, and a community of shared ideas. They recall favorite books, early hardware like the TI-99, and discuss how newer environments such as MicroWorlds and HyperStudio compare to Logo’s original promise.
To Glen and Gina Bull: From LX Editors, Past and Present – Dorothy Fitch, Sharon Yoder, and Tom Lough
Three Logo Exchange editors, Dorothy Fitch, Sharon Yoder, and Tom Lough, offer personal tributes to Glen and Gina Bull upon their retirement from the Windows on Logo column. Each recalls the origins of the column and the lasting impact of the Bulls’ writing on the Logo community.
Logo: Search and Research: Parallel Programming in Star Logo – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama discuss Mitchel Resnick’s book on StarLogo, a massively parallel version of Logo that lets students model decentralized systems like flocking birds, slime mold aggregation, and traffic jams. They explain Resnick’s five heuristics for understanding self-organizing behavior and Seymour Papert’s argument that such tools represent a new paradigm for educational research.
Global Logo Happenings: Constructing Change in Schools Through Teacher Training in Logo – Jose Armando Valente
Jose Armando Valente describes a contextualized-constructionist approach to Logo teacher training, developed in Brazil, in which teachers learn Logo language and methodology directly within their own schools rather than through decontextualized courses. He outlines the program’s five modules and shares results from special-needs and regular schools where the approach was implemented.

Volume 15 (1996–1997)

Fall 1996 (Vol. 15, No. 1)

From the Editor – Dorothy M. Fitch
Welcomes readers to the fifteenth volume of Logo Exchange and previews the issue’s articles on patterns, motion, geography, recursion, and educational change. Invites students and teachers to submit their own Logo projects, lessons, and classroom stories for future publication.
Quarterly Quantum: Carry Torch Pass Flame – Tom Lough
Recounts the author’s experience carrying the Olympic torch through Hartford, Connecticut, and the powerful moment of passing the flame to the next runner. Draws a parallel between that act of passing the flame and the way Logo educators pass along the spirit and excitement of learning to their students and colleagues.
Logosium ’96 – A Report – Theodore Norton
Reports on the third annual Logosium conference held at St. Anthony Park Elementary School in St. Paul, Minnesota, describing sessions ranging from robotics and multimedia to Logo on the World Wide Web. Recounts keynote speaker Geraldine Kozberg’s reflections on how the Logo movement evolved over ten years from a hoped-for revolution into a slower culture of transition.
The Beginner’s Corner: Exploring the Logo Screen – Jim Muller
Presents activities for introducing young children to turtle commands, including a Turtle Baseball game and homemade Turtle Town map transparencies paired with turtle-shaped pencils. Explains how these hands-on exercises build visualization skills and lead naturally into student-designed games and turtle geography lessons.
Wumpus, Whimsy, or Gloop? – Ihor Charischak
Introduces the Spiros microworld, in which a Logo procedure draws spirolaterals that fall into categories called Wumpuses, Whimsies, and Gloops depending on their three numeric inputs. Walks through how workshop teachers experimented with the program and gradually conjectured the numerical rule, later confirmed in an accompanying data table, that determines which category a given set of numbers produces.
The Mystery of the Moving Billiard Ball – Robert Macdonald
Presents a LogoWriter microworld simulating a billiard ball bouncing at forty-five-degree angles across a grid-shaped table, built from procedures that draw the grid and let keys control the ball’s motion. Shows how students collect data across many table dimensions to discover ratio-based laws predicting the number of bounces and the corner where the ball will exit.
Logo in Motion: Exploring Elementary Physics – Nancy Flynn
Demonstrates how short recursive Logo procedures can model physics phenomena that are hard to show in a real classroom, including Newton’s first law of motion, circular motion, and accelerated motion. Extends the approach to sound by using turtle-drawing procedures to trace sine waves and vary their wavelength, amplitude, frequency, and phase.
Exploring Turtle Geography – Jim Muller
Describes how a student’s question about the turtle “wrapping” around the edges of the screen grew into a classroom exploration of maps, flattening, and scale. Culminates in a PC Logo geography game set in Texas, where players convert real mileage into turtle steps to guide the turtle between cities.
Recursion and the Stack – Don E. Ryoti
Explains the computer’s stack mechanism for executing recursive procedures by contrasting the kounta and kountb procedures and tracing, line by line, how each call is pushed onto and popped off the stack. Extends the analysis to several variant procedures to show how the placement of the recursive call within a procedure changes what gets printed and whether the recursion terminates.
Logo: Search and Research: Getting Computers Into the Classroom – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Reviews an Ontario Ministry of Education report that identifies ten critical factors, including clarity, consensus, and central office commitment, that determine whether technology innovations like Logo take hold in schools. Outlines the report’s recommended strategies for competence development, consultant training, and spreading effective classroom practice.

Winter 1996/1997 (Vol. 15, No. 2)

From the Editor: The Old and the New – Dorothy M. Fitch
Dorothy Fitch reflects on her town’s new self-checkout supermarket scanners and how shoppers, especially one particular age group, struggle with the debugging built into the system. She previews the issue’s recurring theme of looking backward and forward, introducing the articles on computer history, Logo’s legacy, robotics, simulations, and optical illusions.
Quarterly Quantum: Make It Better – Tom Lough
Tom Lough draws on his experience at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to explore why so many participants keep competing even though few can win, and connects this to why teachers keep teaching. He argues that Logo educators, like athletes, are driven by incremental self-improvement rather than victory alone, closing with a call to “make it better.”
The Beginner’s Corner: Simulations to Get You Started – Jim Muller
Jim Muller introduces the cartoon robot character Mrtle to demonstrate simulations, telling a story of two brothers who program a robot to clean a house using a flawed step-by-step list of instructions. He contrasts that linear approach with a more robust procedural Logo program, showing how structured procedures catch errors that a simple sequence of steps misses.
Do You Remember When … ? – MACUL Newsletter (Burton H. Brooks, Editor)
This reprinted timeline from MACUL’s 20th anniversary newsletter traces milestones in computer education history from 1975 through 1996, covering the founding of Apple and Microsoft and the rise and fall of early home computers and software. It also charts the growth of MACUL’s own conference attendance over two decades alongside these broader industry developments.
Robotics Fun: At the Supermarket – Uncredited
Reprinted from LEGO DACTA CONNEXION, this hands-on activity guides students through building a LEGO barcode reader with a light brick and optosensor to simulate a supermarket cash register. It walks through writing Logo procedures that count bar-code lines, tally item prices using recursive list-building commands, and extends the challenge with a conveyor belt and bell-tone enhancements.
Fast Food Fun: Displaying Dollars and Cents – John Gough
John Gough presents Logo procedures for a mouse-driven fast-food “menu” that lets users click on items to build a running total, then tackles the tricky problem of formatting that total as proper dollars and cents. He offers refined show.money and money procedures that correctly display whole dollars and single-digit cents, along with conversion tips for other Logo dialects.
Whatever Happened to the Revolution? – Geraldine Kozberg
Geraldine Kozberg shares the text of her 1996 Logosium keynote, built around a 1986 open letter she wrote responding to Brian Harvey and Bill Higginson’s question about what became of the promised Logo revolution. She reflects on ten years of change, argues that Logo produced a new learning culture rather than a revolution, and calls on the Logo community to confront issues of equity while describing new Logo centers being opened in Cambodia.
Optical Illusions – William J. Spezeski
William Spezeski presents Logo procedures that recreate classic optical illusions involving line length, relative circle size, parallel lines, and color contrast. Each procedure includes underlined or hidden instructions that prove the deceptive shapes are actually identical, along with conversion tips for adapting the code to other Logo dialects.
Learning in a Notebook-Saturated Logo Environment – Jenny Betts
Jenny Betts describes her Australian primary classroom where every student has a personal notebook computer used throughout the school day for learner-directed Logo projects. She outlines a four-phase framework of planning, action, assimilation, and outcome that structures how students choose topics, research, and present their work with teacher guidance rather than fixed lessons.
A Simulation Challenge: The Doctor’s Dilemma – Jim Muller
Jim Muller responds to a doctor’s request for help simulating the growth behavior of a neural growth cone, presenting Logo procedures that make a turtle seek out and grow along cells of a particular color while ignoring others. The article includes the full working program along with conversion tips and challenges readers to extend it to simulate movement toward chemical gradients.
Logo: Search and Research – Logo in the Classroom: A Tale of Three Teachers – Julie Sarama and Douglas H. Clements
Julie Sarama and Douglas Clements recount a case study of a school’s uneven attempt to implement their Turtle Math software, tracing how differing perspectives among researchers, teachers, and the principal undermined support around computer access, technical help, and validation. They draw lessons for future implementations, emphasizing administrative involvement, coordinated support across multiple reform efforts, and the value of external validation for teachers.

Spring 1997 (Vol. 15, No. 3)

From the Editor’s Mailbag – Dorothy M. Fitch
The editor shares a letter from teacher Orlando Mihich describing two young students who documented their own LEGO Logo procedures with pride and skill. She reflects on the value of noticing what students are capable of and invites Logo users of all ages to submit their own work for publication.
Quarterly Quantum: A Matter of Proportion – Tom Lough
Lough presents a Logo procedure for drawing a square that remembers its current size and applies each new scale factor relative to that size rather than a fixed original. He poses a puzzle about how to restore the square to its original dimensions after several scaling operations, encouraging readers to explore the underlying variable logic themselves.
ASCII Artwork – Jim Muller
Muller demonstrates how the char and ascii primitives can be used to print letters, numbers, and symbols on the text screen, including building a personalized signature and reproducing a 1980s movie logo out of characters. He extends the idea into animation, moving and flashing text signatures around the screen and suggesting further embellishments like color and sound.
Dartboards, Roulette Wheels, and Spinners – William J. Spezeski
Spezeski lays out a five-step turtle-graphics algorithm for constructing a dartboard from concentric circles, sector lines, shading, and numbered labels, then shows how small modifications convert the same design into an animated roulette wheel or spinner. An editor’s note adds an alternate version of the procedures using the fillsh command for Logo PLUS on the Macintosh.
Nurturing a Logo Culture From the Ground Up – Nan Youngerman
Youngerman reflects on starting a new middle school teaching position and deliberately building a classroom Logo culture through projects like “Robot Writing” and “Flags” that balance structure with open-ended exploration. She discusses how students progressed from basic turtle commands to variables and procedures while she worked to normalize mistakes as part of learning.
Merging Technologies: LEGO TC logo and the Color QuickCam – Orlando Mihich (Featuring: Patrick Mahaney and Sam Lazarus)
Mihich describes how two of his students mounted a Connectix Color QuickCam onto a LEGO TC Logo robot controlled by an aging Apple IIgs, creating a mobile camera rig for recording classmates. The article includes the students’ own written explanation and Logo procedures for driving the vehicle forward, backward, and turning via keyboard control.
Hieroglyphics + Logo = Fun – Robert Macdonald
Macdonald introduces the history of Egyptian hieroglyphics and presents a system for mapping each letter of the English alphabet to a corresponding hieroglyph using LogoWriter’s shapes editor. He provides working procedures that transliterate typed messages into hieroglyphic text reading either left to right or right to left, using ASCII codes to trigger the correct shapes.
More Fun on the Text Screen – Jim Muller
Muller shows how simple recursive Logo procedures using butlast, butfirst, and count can turn a single word into shrinking or growing text triangles on the screen. He extends the technique to build a boxword procedure that wraps repeating text into a solid square or rectangle shape using cursor positioning.
Math Activity: Get Rich Quick!? – Ihor Charischak
Charischak presents a classroom activity in which students compare a linear summer-job pay plan against a doubling penny-a-day plan, discovering that exponential growth eventually overtakes the seemingly generous linear option. He walks through a lesson dialogue and provides Logo procedures that calculate and print daily wages and running totals for both plans across the month.
Learning in Logo Microworlds: OzLogo National Conference 1996 – Jenny Betts
Betts reports on the 1996 OzLogo National Conference in Melbourne, held to mark the 21st anniversary of Logo use in Australia, featuring keynote speaker Gary Stager and presentations from Australian teacher-researchers on classroom Logo and MicroWorlds practice. She recounts the conference’s workshops, panel discussions, new published resources, and a special dinner honoring pioneering Australian Logo educator Sandra Wills.

Summer 1997 (Vol. 15, No. 4)

From the Editor: Parting Thoughts – Dorothy M. Fitch
Fitch announces that she is stepping down as editor-in-chief for personal reasons and reflects warmly on her years working with LX authors and readers. She also recounts using Logo’s setheading and forward commands to create a precisely scaled map of a hayfield for a bird-banding station, converting paced-out compass measurements into turtle graphics.
Quarterly Quantum: Logo 101 – Tom Lough
Lough marks his 101st editorial by tracing the newsletter’s history since its 1982 founding as The National LOGO Exchange and revisiting its original “FORWARD 100” motto. He pays tribute to Dorothy Fitch’s editorship and proposes a new motto built around a Logo procedure for the Roman numeral C, “FD C more!”
Logo Workshops: Summer 1997 – compiled by the editor
This roundup lists five summer 1997 Logo workshops and institutes, including the Stonington Retreat in Maine, Summer at Spence in New York City, Logosium in Seattle, the Colorado Logo Institute, and Logo St. Paul in Minnesota. Each entry gives dates, fees, facilitators, and contact information for educators considering attendance.
Sea Urchins and Random Memories – John Gough
Gough presents several LogoWriter procedures for drawing sea urchins with randomly sized spikes, comparing a global-variable approach against versions that use local variables to remember turtle position or spike length. He extends the technique into a randomly colored “tartan” pattern generator that fills the screen with spotted, spiky shapes.
Robotics Fun: What’s Your Best Guess? – Uncredited (reprinted from LEGO DACTA CONNEXION)
This reprinted activity guide provides Logo TC procedures and classroom steps for having students estimate, then measure, the distances and rotations traveled by a LEGO robotic turtle. It covers building and calibrating the turtle, running trials in inches, centimeters, and degrees, and includes teaching notes with discussion questions about estimation skills.
A Challenging Game of Nim – Jim Muller
Muller presents Logo implementations of the classic game of Nim, first in PC Logo and then in MSWLogo using Windows dialog boxes and radio buttons, and explains the simple arithmetic formula that lets the computer always win. He closes with challenges for readers to add graphics, randomness, or multiple rows of pieces to increase the game’s strategic complexity.
Drawing Objects for Flexibility – William J. Spezeski
Spezeski explains how restricting Logo drawing procedures to relative turtle movement lets objects be repositioned and rotated freely, and how adding multiplier parameters lets a single procedure scale, flip, or deliberately distort a shape. He illustrates the technique throughout with a sailboat procedure, producing resized, mirrored, and Cubist-like deformed versions of the same figure.
Musings: Language, Grammar, and Logo – Robert Macdonald
Macdonald draws on Leonard Bernstein’s phonology-syntax-semantics framework for language to structure classroom activities exploring letter frequency, word frequency, and English sentence structure. He supplies Logo Writer procedures that let students randomly generate “silly sentences,” similes, and metaphors from lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other word categories.
Seeing Algebra: My Turtle Plots Graphs – John Gough
Gough offers Logo Writer procedures for plotting simple harmonic motion, sine and cosine curves, Fourier-style sums of trigonometric functions, and Lissajous figures, arguing that Logo can model advanced mathematics and physics topics. He links the programming exercises to real-world phenomena like musical overtones and FM radio, and poses extension questions for readers to investigate.
Logo: Search and Research – A Tale of Three Teachers, Part II – Julie Sarama and Douglas H. Clements
Sarama and Clements continue their case study of three teachers using Turtle Math, examining how each teacher’s beliefs about mathematics, teaching, and technology aligned or conflicted with their actual classroom practices. They also report students’ more nuanced view of the software as an exploratory tool rather than simply a game, concluding that mismatched visions between designers and teachers hampered the reform effort.

Volume 16 (1997–1998)

Fall 1997 (Vol. 16, No. 1)

A Word for Logo – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager introduces himself as the new editor of Logo Exchange, paying tribute to founding editor Tom Lough and outgoing editor Dorothy Fitch while unveiling the publication’s redesigned look by FableVision Studios. He welcomes a roster of new contributing columnists and invites readers to submit research, projects, and teacher features for future issues.
The L Word: Don’t Be Afraid to Use It! – Tom Lough
Tom Lough recounts an incident in which he found himself hesitant to say the word “Logo” aloud to a colleague, prompting reflection on Seymour Papert’s argument that Logo’s fate was dissolved rather than solved. He traces how Logo evolved through LEGO robotics, Idit Harel’s software design projects, and the Web, concluding that the language has grown rather than failed.
Logosium ’97 at NECC in Seattle – Dwight Harris
Dwight Harris reports on Logosium ’97, a one-day Logo conference held at John Hay Elementary School in Seattle alongside NECC and organized by Marian Rosen, which drew fifty participants from twelve states and four countries for concurrent sessions on topics ranging from robotics to language arts. He highlights Logo Foundation Director Michael Tempel’s keynote, “The State of the Turtle,” and Rosen’s observation that much of what is good in educational technology has roots in Logo.
Logo News – Uncredited
This news roundup covers vendor announcements including LCSI’s new Web plug-in and site-license purchase options for MicroWorlds, the merger of Terrapin Software and Harvard Associates and the release of PC Logo for Windows Version 2, and the free MSWLogo release from Brian Harvey and George Mills. It also details new features in StarLogo 2.0 and the Investigations in Number, Data, and Space math curriculum, which includes the Geo-Logo software developed by Doug Clements and Julie Sarama.
The Philosophy of Logo: Its Most Important Attribute – David D. Thornburg
David Thornburg traces his own history with constructionist programming environments, from Smalltalk and Atari PILOT to the Big Trak robot, arguing that Logo’s central value lies in its underlying pedagogical philosophy rather than the language itself. He profiles the programming-by-demonstration tool Cocoa and StarLogo as kindred tools for building interactive microworlds, urging that this philosophy continue to drive education regardless of which specific tool is used.
Book Review: Forging Tech-Savvy Families – Carolyn Dowling
Carolyn Dowling reviews Seymour Papert’s book The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap, describing its more intimate, collaborative tone compared to his earlier writing and its integration of an accompanying CD and website into the reading experience. She praises its call for parents to embrace technology-rich family learning while noting that its heavily American-centered examples may limit its resonance for international readers.
Teacher Feature: Frank Corley – Marian Rosen (Featuring: Frank Corley)
Marian Rosen profiles Frank Corley, a mathematics teacher at Priory School in St. Louis who discovered Logo through Papert’s Mindstorms and built a discovery-based classroom around open-ended problems like Random Chords and the Greater Than One challenge. She recounts how one student’s independent solution to a summer investigations problem, mirroring a formula for the volume of a four-dimensional pyramid, produced a moment of spontaneous classroom celebration.
StarLogo Starters: Getting Started – Alan Epstein
Alan Epstein introduces StarLogo, Mitchel Resnick’s parallel dialect of Logo designed for modeling decentralized systems such as traffic patterns and insect colonies, explaining how commands act on many turtles simultaneously and how individual turtle data can produce emergent group behavior. He walks through a sample aging simulation program and previews patches, StarLogo’s environment-modeling feature, ahead of a follow-up column on simulating termite behavior.
For Beginners: Tips for Making Multimedia with MicroWorlds 2.0 – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager offers practical tips for exploring the multimedia features of MicroWorlds 2.0, covering the versatile Eye Tool, how named objects can be triggered like procedures, custom button shapes, and importing sound and video files into projects. He also shares several ready-to-use Logo procedures, including one for automatically playing and hiding a video clip and others for listing or clearing turtles and text boxes on a page.
The Koch Snowflake Curve and Recursion – Don E. Ryoti
Don Ryoti walks through a sequence of Logo procedures that progressively build the Koch Snowflake curve, from a single triangular path through recursive generator procedures that produce increasingly complex, self-similar fractal figures. He then examines the execution stack created by these recursive calls in detail, using it to pose further questions about the relationship between recursion depth, stage count, and the number of lines executed.
In Their Own Words: Stop the Internet, I Want to Get Off – Brian Harvey
Brian Harvey explains his skepticism toward the World Wide Web, arguing that its publishing metaphor is less democratic than the conversational, text-based culture of e-mail and newsgroups he prefers. He recounts a student who located the answer to a programming puzzle through a Web search rather than working it out independently, using the anecdote to question whether Web-based educational fads risk replacing problem-solving with fact-finding.
Logo and Thinking Writing: Part I – Leslie F. Thyberg
Leslie Thyberg proposes treating Logo programming as a form of composition, mapping the prewriting, writing, and postwriting stages of the writing-process model, along with Bransford and Stein’s IDEAL problem-solving framework, onto Logo project work. She describes classroom strategies such as student editing committees and a “Three Before Me” help rule for building a self-supporting, process-oriented culture around both writing and programming.
Teaching Recursion: A Cognitive Profile Perspective – Pam Gibbons
Pam Gibbons applies Luria’s model of simultaneous and successive brain processing to explain why recursive programming poses particular cognitive challenges for novice Logo programmers. She argues that diagrammatic representations and varied instructional metaphors, rather than purely verbal or sequential explanations, better support the simultaneous processing needed to build a sound mental model of recursion.
Logo: Search and Research – This Much We Know: Part I, Mathematics – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama review more than a decade of published research on how Logo programming supports mathematics learning, highlighting studies showing gains in geometric classification, spatial sense, and proportional reasoning among Logo-using students. They enumerate the specific features of Logo that facilitate mathematical thinking and emphasize the teacher’s essential mediating role in translating programming experience into conceptual understanding.
The Back Page: Commentary – We Choose to Go to the Moon – Daniel E. Kinnaman
Daniel Kinnaman draws on President Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech as a metaphor for Logo, arguing that its value lies precisely in the fact that it is hard rather than easy, deep rather than passive. He contends that schools should embrace this kind of challenging, adventurous learning and that Logo remains a vehicle for the intellectual engagement Kennedy’s words describe.
25 Things to Do with LEGO and Logo – Gary Stager
Gary Stager offers a list of twenty-five open-ended project ideas for combining LEGO construction with Logo programming, ranging from a “City of the Future” and a robotic ballerina to a supermarket scanner and a Morse code machine. The list is intended to spark classroom invention, closing with an invitation for students to generate twenty-five ideas of their own.

Winter 1997/1998 (Vol. 16, No. 2)

Hard Fun – Gary S. Stager
Stager introduces this issue’s feature speech by Seymour Papert and reflects on Papert’s concept of “hard fun” as the deepest kind of learning that mixes passion and challenge. He also highlights Robert Tinker’s argument for Logo’s resurgence and cites Costa Rica’s investment in Logo-based education as a model of what committed schools can achieve.
Home Work – Tom Lough
Lough uses the Logo HOME command as a springboard for a wordplay-filled meditation on the many meanings of “home,” weaving in Todd Oppenheimer’s skeptical Atlantic Monthly article on computers in schools. He closes by noting Papert’s observation that innovation in learning is shifting from schools to homes, and shares news of his own move to Murray State University.
Eurologo 1997, Budapest, Hungary – Brian Harvey (edited by Jeff Richardson)
Harvey shares impressions from the EuroLogo 1997 conference in Budapest, noting a tension between viewing Logo as a mathematics-learning tool and its newer role within the school subject of Informatics. He also describes the confident demeanor of Hungarian children and praises the multimedia and debugging features of products like Comenius Logo and MSWLogo.
Learning In a Multimedia World – Brenden Morris
Morris recounts a residential workshop led by Gary Stager and Fred D’Ignazio at Avalon, Victoria, in which teachers used MicroWorlds 2.0 and various multimedia tools to explore collaborative, student-driven projects. He describes how participants formed interest-based groups, worked with video, audio, and Internet tools, and regularly demonstrated their progress in “demo or die” sessions.
StarLogo Models Available for Download – Uncredited
This news item announces that a Tufts University project on building object-based parallel models has made numerous StarLogo models available for download, spanning domains such as physics, biology, economics, and art. It notes that many models are designed to be “extensible,” supporting demonstration, exploration, and modification, and are linked to the Connected Probability Project.
Logo’s Return – Robert Tinker
Tinker argues that falling computer costs and new devices like the Apple eMate herald an era of ubiquitous student computing that could finally deliver on decades-old promises of technology-driven educational reform. He outlines four escalating levels of curricular impact, from simple module replacement to interdisciplinary restructuring, and contends Logo is uniquely positioned to lead this reemergence.
The Cyber Self – Carolyn Dowling
Dowling reviews Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen, tracing how the book extends Turkle’s earlier work on computers and identity to examine how Internet culture lets users construct multiple identities. She praises its rich treatment of simulation culture and postmodern theory while finding its closing cautionary notes on the “dark side” of virtuality less compelling than the rest.
Teacher Feature: John St. Clair – Jim Muller
Muller interviews longtime Logo educator John St. Clair, who began using Apple Logo with kindergartners in 1984 and went on to co-moderate the Logo-L listserv and serve on the Global SchoolNet Foundation board. St. Clair describes his current work teaching turtle geometry, animation, and LEGO Logo robotics to middle schoolers and reflects on what he still wants from Logo software.
Starting with StarLogo: Self-Organizing Behavior – Alan Epstein
Epstein presents a step-by-step StarLogo tutorial in which readers build a simulation of termites that collect woodchips into piles, introducing turtle and patch commands such as crt, setc, and stamp along the way. The column demonstrates how simple individual rules can produce emergent, leaderless self-organizing behavior similar to real-world systems like ant colonies and traffic jams.
For Beginners: MicroWorlds for Munchkins – Gary Stager
Stager makes the case for introducing MicroWorlds to very young children, describing how even pre-readers can paint pictures, create multi-page projects, and program simple turtle animations using teacher-made reference cards. He illustrates the potential with five-year-old John Richardson, who used MicroWorlds to tell stories and design insect reports before dictating further programming steps to his father.
Looking at Technology Through School-Colored Spectacles – Seymour Papert
In this transcribed talk, Papert argues that deeply ingrained assumptions about what school “is” distort nearly every discussion of educational technology, illustrating the point with a parable about a jet engine mistakenly bolted onto a stagecoach. He challenges the rationale for teaching fractions, disputes claims that computers are too expensive for schools, and calls for giving every child a computer and letting productive uses grow organically rather than through top-down curriculum design.
Logo and Thinking Writing: Part II – Leslie F. Thyberg
Thyberg continues her series on building a “thinking writing” Logo classroom, detailing techniques such as freewriting, learning logs, and several types of journals—including dialogue, buddy, and double-entry journals—that help students reflect on their Logo work. She ties these practices to the UCI Writing Project’s tenets and Cambourne’s conditions for language learning, arguing that writing about Logo deepens students’ understanding of their own learning.
Logo: Search and Research: This Much We Know, Part II, Mathematics – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Clements and Sarama continue their research review by surveying studies on how Logo, when accompanied by teacher mediation, can foster higher-order and metacognitive thinking, creativity, and language development in students. They also summarize evidence that Logo environments promote positive social-emotional outcomes, including increased cooperation, conflict resolution, self-esteem, and peer teaching.
The Last Word: Storytelling and Situated Cognition – Daniel E. Kinnaman
Kinnaman explores the theory of situated cognition, explaining how “instructional anchors” and good storytelling create learning contexts that give knowledge lasting utility beyond test preparation. He argues that Logo is uniquely suited to this kind of learning because it lets students author their own stories and microworlds, citing Papert’s example of students learning about velocity decomposition while building a video game.

Spring 1998 (Vol. 16, No. 3)

Logo and Jazz – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager draws parallels between the cultures of jazz and Logo, arguing both value individual expression within community, demand serious commitment, and are frequently misunderstood or under-appreciated by mainstream educators. He also promotes the upcoming Logosium ’98 conference at NECC in San Diego as a gathering for the Logo community.
Make “Seven 5 – Tom Lough
Tom Lough uses a Logo turtle procedure that traces a city-block path to explore why the sum of two perpendicular legs equals seven while the Pythagorean hypotenuse of the same triangle equals five. He reflects on how examining a problem from multiple perspectives, as with the turtle’s path versus the straight-line distance, applies more broadly to assessing student achievement and embracing new ideas.
Logo News – Uncredited
This news roundup announces Logosium ’98 at NECC in San Diego along with a call for workshop proposals, and highlights a free online sample issue of Logo Exchange. It also covers new publications including Jim Muller’s hands-on Logo book and the Logo: A Retrospective anthology, plus the newly announced LEGO Mindstorms programmable brick and the Logo Foundation’s summer workshop offerings.
Fred and Catie’s Excellent Adventure – Fred D’Ignazio and Catie D’Ignazio
Fred and Catie D’Ignazio recount, through a whimsical turtle allegory, their experience co-teaching an intensive MicroWorlds multimedia workshop for Australian teachers at Avalon Conference Center. The story describes how teachers overwhelmed by disparate new skills organized themselves into a knowledge-sharing network of one-minute gurus, echoing a Seymour Papert quote about navigating unfamiliar domains of knowledge.
The Games Children Make – Carolyn Dowling
Carolyn Dowling reviews Yasmin Kafai’s Minds in Play, which recounts a project in which fourth-grade students designed computer games to teach fractions to younger children. She praises the book’s theoretical grounding in constructionist research by Papert, Turkle, and Harel, while noting its relevance broadens as the Internet has since supplemented games as a focus of children’s computing.
Josie Hopkins – Jeff Richardson (Featuring: Josie Hopkins)
Jeff Richardson profiles Josie Hopkins, a former Olympic synchronized-swimming coach who nearly left teaching until discovering Logo at John Paul College and later at Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne. The piece describes how her students used Logo and MicroWorlds to model the solar system, Mendelian genetics, cellular ecology, and other science concepts through dynamic, hands-on projects.
Birds – Alan Epstein
Alan Epstein presents a StarLogo tutorial that builds a bird-flocking simulation from simple local rules, showing how each turtle adjusts its heading and speed only in relation to its nearest neighbor. He walks through the setup, movement, and course-correction procedures, introducing StarLogo-specific commands like who-min-of-turtles and turtles-own along the way.
Prime Time Math Challenge: A Game of Multiplication and Division – Donald Bourdon
Donald Bourdon presents Prime Time Math, a two-player Logo game modeled on the Juniper Green math game, in which players alternately select exact multiples or divisors of a shared number until one player is stuck. He details the program’s procedures for the game grid, input validation, and turn tracking, and includes the complete Logo code along with suggestions for enhancements.
Logo in Russia – Olga A. Tuzova
Olga Tuzova presents a roundtable-style discussion among St. Petersburg teachers debating the value and challenges of using Logo, LogoWriter, and LogoMiry in Russian schools. Participants share differing views, from Logo’s power to foster investigation and self-expression to skepticism about whether multimedia-based work still counts as real programming.
Logo in the Classroom: The UK Story – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama examine Celia Hoyles’ UK research identifying four ways Logo becomes altered as it enters classrooms: pedagogizing, compartmentalizing, incorporating, and neutralizing. They also discuss related work by Moreira and Noss on preparing teachers to adopt new ways of thinking about their practice rather than simply adding Logo onto existing routines.
Turning Manipulatives Inside Out – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager describes a classroom activity in which student teams first explore physical tessellating manipulatives like pattern blocks or Puzzelations pieces, then design Logo procedures and interfaces to recreate and manipulate those shapes on screen. He suggests extension activities using variables and sliders to control shape size and create tessellation patterns.
Making MicroWorlds Music – John Gough
John Gough explains how MicroWorlds’ note, setinstrument, and rest primitives let students program music using MIDI pitch numbers and duration values rather than only the built-in point-and-click Melody gadget. He covers translating written music into Logo code, handling triplets, and experimenting with scales such as whole-tone and twelve-tone rows.
Drawing with Arcs: Part I, Replacing Straight Lines with Arcs – William J. Spezeski
William Spezeski shows how the Logo primitives ARCR and ARCL can replace straight line segments with convex or concave arcs when drawing polygons, stars, and spirals. He provides the underlying procedures and geometric reasoning, along with sample figures illustrating the striking visual variations that result.
Clever Kids and Computers: The Future Down Under! – Mark Brown and Tracy Riley
Mark Brown and Tracy Riley describe Computing for Clever Kids, a one-day MicroWorlds workshop at Massey University in which gifted nine-to-eleven-year-olds worked as a simulated design team to build microworlds exploring the theme of the future. They report high levels of engagement and skill development among participants, supported by survey data on students’ perceived programming competence.
Putting MicroWorlds Projects on the Web – Gary S. Stager
Gary Stager explains how to publish MicroWorlds projects on the World Wide Web using the SAVEHTML command and LCSI’s Web plug-in, noting the differing capabilities available to Macintosh versus Windows 95 users. He offers practical guidelines for sizing projects, choosing web-compatible media, and using buttons and turtles in place of the command center.
Teach to the Standards; Not to the Test – Daniel E. Kinnaman
Daniel Kinnaman argues that teachers should focus on understanding the theory behind educational standards rather than drilling students on specific test question formats, illustrating the point with a Connecticut mastery test question on estimation. He describes how a LEGO-Logo robotics project helped students genuinely grasp estimation in ways that transferred to test success and deeper discussion.

Summer 1998 (Vol. 16, No. 4)

Editorial: Looking for Logo in All the Wrong Places – Gary S. Stager
Reflects on educational equity by way of Geraldine Kozberg’s Logosium keynote about Logo’s limited reach into under-resourced communities, and introduces this issue’s contributors, especially the Teacher Feature on Newark educators Chuck DiComo and Mike Caputo. Also highlights the contributions of Paula Don, Orlando Mihich, and Michael Gelman to the issue.
Quarterly Quantum: Just a Little Bit – Tom Lough
Uses the Logo IF conditional as a metaphor for how small, seemingly insignificant moments and decisions can shape the course of a life. Recalls his own chance introduction to Logo as a graduate student and encourages readers to notice and celebrate the small ways Logo appears in students’ lives.
Logo News – Uncredited
Reports on LCSI’s new Mac CD-ROM release of MicroWorlds 2.03, a free web plug-in, and special upgrade and site-license offers for Logo and HyperStudio users. Announces themes and submission deadlines for upcoming Logo Exchange issues, including “Back to School” and “Perspectives on Papert.”
Elementary MicroWorlds Energy Simulations – Paula Don
Describes a Philadelphia elementary computer club’s Scientist in the City project, in which fourth graders built MicroWorlds simulations of solar, hydroelectric, and battery-powered energy systems. Details the collaborative design process, from importing Kid Pix stamps to troubleshooting variables, and reflects on balancing technological engagement with genuine science understanding.
Book Review: Spamming the Generation Gap – Carolyn Dowling
Reviews Don Tapscott’s book “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation,” questioning its polemical, deterministic tone toward technological change even while agreeing with many of its underlying observations. Argues that the book’s rhetoric of inevitability may unsettle older generations more than the actual shifts in practice it describes.
Teacher Feature: Mike Caputo and Chuck DiComo – Pamela E. Morgan (Featuring: Mike Caputo and Chuck DiComo)
Presents an interview with two veteran Newark, New Jersey computer teachers about how they began using Logo, LogoWriter, and LEGO Logo in the 1980s despite limited resources in a high-poverty district. Explores how Logo fostered student independence, self-esteem, and lasting community and career impact.
Starting with StarLogo: The Chase, Part I – Alan Epstein
Introduces a StarLogo predator-prey simulation involving lynx and hare turtle breeds, walking through code for setup, movement, hunting, reproduction, and death procedures. Explains commands such as setbreed, hatch, and output as building blocks for modeling population dynamics, with a follow-up column promising graphing extensions.
From Science Center Through Lego to Logo to Sheldrake? – Orlando Mihich
Recounts how his students built a laser light show using LEGO motors and mirrors after a science museum visit, then discovered that students in Mitchel Resnick’s Boston lab had independently created something similar. Muses on Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance as a playful explanation for the coincidence.
Random Explorations – Bill Kerr
Argues for teaching probability by foregrounding the concept of randomness itself, using Logo’s random primitive rather than traditional dice-and-cards textbook exercises. Presents a sequence of classroom projects, such as drunk-turtle walks, coin flips, random squares, and turtle races, illustrating Papert’s ideas of “project before problem” and “media before content.”
In Their Own Words: Growing Up with Logo – Michael A. Gelman
Recounts his personal journey from early BASIC lessons to becoming a devoted young Logo programmer under the mentorship of Gary Stager, with exposure to figures like Seymour Papert. Reflects on how Logo’s philosophy of learning through discovery shaped his later education and career as an MD/PhD student.
Creating Learning Moments with Logo – Nicola Yelland and Jennifer Masters
Reports on classroom research comparing young children’s collaborative problem-solving using the Geo-Logo and Turtle Math “Get the Toys” maze activity, contrasting teacher-supported and unsupported groups of students. Uses transcribed dialogue between student pairs to show how scaffolding and encouragement affect children’s planning, persistence, and success.
Logo: Search and Research – Computers in and for Our Diverse Society – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Examines findings from a presidential panel and related research on inequities in computer and Logo access along lines of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and geography. Discusses how minority and low-income students are more often relegated to drill-and-practice software rather than programming environments like Logo, and cites studies suggesting Logo may particularly benefit these students.
Drawing with Arcs, Part II: Exploring Variations – William J. Spezeski
Continues an exploration of replacing straight lines with arcs in Logo turtle graphics, presenting procedures for alternating and paired-arc polygons, stars, and spirals. Shows how these techniques extend to fractal patterns, producing intricate figures from relatively simple recursive code.
For Beginners: The Prospector Game, Playing with Coordinates – Adam Smith
Walks beginning MicroWorlds users through building a coordinate-based treasure-hunting game in which a prospector turtle searches for hidden gold nuggets. Explains setpos, distance, and coordinate concepts step by step, and suggests extension ideas for more advanced students.
The Last Word: Using Logo in All the Right Ways – Daniel E. Kinnaman
Contrasts two versions of the same teacher’s LEGO TC Logo lesson, one requiring students to replicate a prescribed model and one allowing open-ended design toward specified criteria. Uses the comparison to argue that there is no single correct way to use Logo, but that lessons should be judged by whether they foster process, ownership, and creative problem-solving.

Volume 17 (1998–1999)

Fall 1998 (Vol. 17, No. 1)

Learning Among the Giants – Gary S. Stager
This editorial reflects on the recent deaths of jazz singer Betty Carter and the author’s junior high band director Richard Lukas, drawing parallels between their improvisational, student-centered teaching styles and the spirit of Logo educators. It closes with thanks to the issue’s contributors and an invitation for readers to keep sharing classroom stories.
Back to School – Tom Lough
This column uses the quirky “to to” response that different Logo versions give when a student types “back to school” as a springboard for discussing procedures as the infinitive-like heart of Logo programming. It argues that students at every level still have much to discover about procedures, and includes a matching quiz pairing hardware/software combinations with their actual responses.
What I Did on My Three Summer Vacations – Brian Silverman
This article recounts a multi-year effort with family members and MIT colleagues to map and speed-run a giant physical maze in Montreal’s Old Port using early programmable LEGO bricks running tiny Logo programs. It describes overcoming unreliable hardware and recording errors across several summers, finally achieving a record time through a relay-team strategy for passing stamp cards through the maze walls.
The Book of Learning and Forgetting – Carolyn Dowling
This book review examines Frank Smith’s contrast between the intuitive “Classic View” of learning and the coercive “Official Theory” that dominates schools, noting parallels to the thinking of Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Papert. It also expresses disappointment at the book’s largely negative treatment of educational computing and artificial intelligence.
Teacher Feature: Linda Polin – Gary Stager
This interview profiles Pepperdine University professor Linda Polin, tracing her path from educational psychology into teaching Logo and MicroWorlds to teacher-credential candidates. She recounts a memorable classroom episode in which fourth graders discovered the Pythagorean relationship while debugging a falling-leaves Logo program, and argues that most educational software fails to match Logo’s open-ended power.
Surfing the Net – Rehabilitating a Metaphor – Jeff Richardson
Adapted from his 1998 Logosium keynote, this piece objects to “surfing” as a metaphor for passive Web browsing and argues that real surfing’s risk-taking, skill, and community better describe children actively creating and publishing with Logo and MicroWorlds. It points to student-built MicroWorlds games on the Logo Foundation’s website as an example of children truly appropriating the Web rather than merely browsing it.
A Mayan Pyramid – Orlando Mihich
This article describes a sixth-grade project in which students used turtle geometry and recursive procedures to construct the Maya pyramid El Castillo at Chichen Itza, inspired by following the MayaQuest expedition. It includes a student’s complete MicroWorlds code for the staircase, sides, temple, and entrance of the pyramid.
Build Your Own Virtual Pet with MicroWorlds – Adam Smith (with Gary Stager)
Prompted by the 1990s Tamagotchi craze, this project walks readers through building a MicroWorlds “digital pet” with buttons, text boxes, and procedures that track hunger and happiness over simulated time. It suggests extensions such as random events, growth stages, and animation to make the pet more lifelike.
More from the President’s Panel on Educational Technology – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
This column continues coverage of the President’s Committee report on educational technology, presenting its recommendations on funding levels, teacher professional development, equitable access, and the need for large-scale research into what actually works. It notes that the report’s constructivist leanings and call for programming skills align closely with positions long held by the Logo community.
Drawing Polyhedron Patterns – William J. Spezeski
This article demonstrates Logo procedures for drawing flat, foldable two-dimensional patterns for three-dimensional solids such as cubes and decahedrons, including tabs for gluing the assembled shapes together. It also explores decorative face and edge cutouts that give the finished polyhedra a lattice-like appearance.
The Chase: Part 2 – Alan Epstein
This StarLogo column extends a predator-prey lynx-and-hare simulation from a previous issue by adding graphing procedures that plot population changes over time. It proposes further experiments, such as giving lynx limited vision or making them avoid each other, and asks readers to predict and test the ecological effects.
Logosium ’98 Report – Logo Exchange staff
This report recaps the day-long Logosium ’98 gathering at Pepperdine’s Irvine campus, describing breakout sessions on MicroWorlds, StarLogo, robotics, and Web publishing led by figures including Brian Silverman and Brian Harvey. It also covers closing remarks from Jeff Richardson and Gail Marshall urging Logo educators to document and share their classroom outcomes more widely.
New Year’s Resolutions – Susan Ohanian
This commentary offers a set of pointed resolutions urging teachers to resist standardized “basic skills,” reject marketed “millennium skills” as snake oil, and stop mistaking convenience for genuine educational progress. It calls instead for celebrating individual idiosyncrasy in both students and teachers.
Logo Online – Uncredited
This resource roundup lists Internet destinations for Logo educators, including MicroWorlds Web projects, StarLogo downloads and community sites, Brian Harvey’s Berkeley Logo page, LEGO Mindstorms sites, and the Logo-L listserv. It also points readers to a recent Seymour Papert speech available online.

Winter 1998/1999 (Vol. 17, No. 2)

Never Satisfied, Only Gratified – Gary S. Stager
Stager reflects on Seymour Papert’s decades-long influence on educational computing, praising his ability to generate powerful theories while also building working software and tools. He laments that Logo and Papert’s ideas are too often ignored rather than critiqued in mainstream educational technology literature, arguing that commercial interests discourage schools from embracing Papert’s learner-centered vision.
Jeff Richardson’s Wild Ride – Jeff Richardson
Richardson recounts a chance meeting with Seymour Papert in a taxi following a radio interview at a Melbourne computing conference in 1990. He describes how Papert lingered in the cab for a quarter hour, ignoring anxious conference officials so the conversation about children, computers, and powerful ideas could continue.
Turtle and the Moon – Tom Lough
Lough describes an evening spent observing the moon and Jupiter with his son, using their changing positions across several hours to illustrate the relative motion caused by Earth’s rotation and the moon’s orbit. He connects this celestial observation to the classic Logo challenge of turtle-relative versus observer-relative directions, arguing that such concepts of relative motion are accessible to young learners through the turtle.
Mr. Condom – Seymour Papert
Papert recounts meeting Mechai Viravaidya, a Thai population-control advocate nicknamed “Mr. Condom,” whose playful demonstrations with balloons made villagers comfortable discussing birth control without direct lecturing. He draws a parallel to a Boston fourth-grader named Debbie, whose exploratory Logo software project about fractions transformed her from a struggling math student into a high performer, arguing that relaxed, playful engagement can unlock understanding that direct instruction cannot.
Dancing with Seymour – Tom Lough
Lough traces his personal history with Papert, from first encountering Mindstorms as a physics graduate student to later collaborating on planning international Logo conferences at MIT. He uses the metaphor of dance, culminating in an actual contra dance with Papert at the 1987 East Coast Logo Conference, to describe how Papert’s ideas and mentorship shaped his career in Logo education.
Reading Papert or Growing with Your Guru – Carolyn Dowling
Dowling explores why Papert’s influence has endured rather than faded like other education gurus, crediting his willingness to let his core ideas evolve across Mindstorms, The Children’s Machine, and The Connected Family while staying committed to child-empowered learning. She traces how his concepts of constructionism and epistemological pluralism have broadened beyond the Logo community into wider educational thought.
The History of Mr. Papert – Martin Boyle
Boyle chronicles Papert’s biography from his unconventional South African childhood and early anti-apartheid activism through his academic path via Cambridge, Paris, and study with Jean Piaget in Geneva. He details Papert’s collaboration with Marvin Minsky at MIT, including the Perceptrons controversy and the eventual development of the Logo programming language and constructionist theory.
Simple Probability as a Vehicle for Understanding MicroWorlds Data Structures – Gary S. Stager
Stager presents a step-by-step MicroWorlds project in which students build a coin-flipping simulation using turtles, text boxes, and sliders to record and display probability data. He extends the activity with a histogram built from turtle stamps, demonstrating how MicroWorlds’ parallelism lets multiple data structures update simultaneously during the simulation.
Dreams, Realities, and Possibilities – Gail Marshall
Marshall contrasts the original vision of Logo as a tool for liberating students from rote, linear instruction with the reality that American schools largely resisted this kind of change due to entrenched testing and efficiency-driven traditions. She calls for constructivist researchers to gather compelling evidence and tell convincing stories of Logo’s classroom impact in order to shift educational policy and practice.
Mixed Feelings about Seymour Papert and Logo – Ken Kahn
Kahn describes his own path from working near Papert at MIT in the 1970s through decades of programming-language research culminating in his visual and animated languages Pictorial Janus and ToonTalk. While grateful for Papert’s foundational influence, he expresses disappointment that Logo itself has changed little since the 1970s and argues it has fallen behind more modern, powerful programming language design.
StarLogo Community of Learners Workshop – Vanessa Colella, Eric Klopfer, and Mitchel Resnick
The authors describe a two-week summer workshop at the Santa Fe Institute where high school students and teachers used StarLogo to build models of complex systems like predator-prey dynamics and traffic patterns. They explain how the workshop borrowed “desk-crits” and “pinup” critique sessions from design-studio teaching to balance open-ended exploration with structured peer feedback.
Papert’s Conjecture about the Variability of Piagetian Stages in Computer-Rich Cultures – Anne McDougall
McDougall reports on her multi-year case study and subsequent classroom research testing Papert’s claim that computer-rich environments allow children to grasp abstract concepts like recursion earlier than standard Piagetian theory predicts. She presents evidence from her children’s Logo programming projects, including nested polygon graphics and a recursive storytelling program, showing that even elementary-age children can develop confident, independent use of recursion.
Papert’s Perspectives, Research Responses – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Clements and Sarama survey empirical research responding to several of Papert’s key claims, including spontaneous mathematical learning, body-syntonic geometry, and the transition from informal to formal algebraic thinking through Logo. They conclude that while not all findings uniformly support Papert’s predictions, active teacher mediation consistently strengthens the learning benefits Logo experiences can provide.
Polygons and More – William J. Spezeski
Spezeski develops a Logo procedure for drawing regular polygons with rounded corners, originally intended for designing clickable web page buttons, refining it with trigonometry to control the arc radius and preserve the polygon’s overall size. He then explores what happens when the arc radius becomes large enough to produce negative side lengths, revealing unexpectedly dramatic looping patterns.
Papert, Logo, and Loving to Learn – Pam Gibbons
Gibbons revisits Mindstorms and Papert’s concept of mathophobia, connecting it to her own doctoral research distinguishing “simultaneous” and “successive” cognitive processing styles among Logo programmers. She argues that traditional schooling favors successive, memorization-based learning and calls for learning environments that cultivate simultaneous, relational thinking to help more students learn to love learning.
Explaining Yourself – Bernard Newsome
Newsome, a self-described technology latecomer, reflects on browsing Papert’s Connected Family website and considers how figures like Dewey, Bruner, Vygotsky, and Piaget might combine with Papert’s ideas into a coherent educational philosophy. He proposes adding “Explaining” to Idit Harel’s three Xs of exploring, expressing, and exchanging, distinguishing the practical “how” of skills from the deeper “why” that turns practitioners into theorists.

Spring 1999 (Vol. 17, No. 3)

The More Things Change… – Gary S. Stager
Stager reflects on the disconnect between “school math” and the beauty of true mathematics, citing the NCTM Standards’ claim that more than half of all mathematics has been invented since World War II. He introduces the issue’s theme of mathematical thinking, highlighting contributions from Andy diSessa on Boxer and Paul Goldenberg’s cautionary essay on computers and math learning.
Meaning and Math – Tom Lough
Lough recounts how a college dean’s book, a Phi Delta Kappan article on mathematics miseducation, and his own memories of Mindstorms converged around the theme of meaning in learning. He argues that helping students find personal meaning in mathematics, as the Logo Learning philosophy describes, is central to answering why students must learn what they are taught.
Teacher Feature: Stephen Costa – Gary S. Stager (Featuring: Stephen Costa)
Stager interviews Stephen Costa, an early adopter of one-to-one laptop computing at Methodist Ladies’ College in Melbourne, about his experiences teaching with Logo since the 1980s. Costa describes memorable student projects, the collaborative culture fostered by universal laptop access, and what he has learned about patience and trusting children’s capacity to learn.
Book Review: Making Numbers Count – Carolyn Dowling
Dowling reviews two books on mathematics education, Michael K. Smith’s Humble Pi and Marilyn Burns’ Math: Facing an American Phobia, contrasting Smith’s iconoclastic critique of school mathematics with Burns’ more moderate call for active, exploratory numeracy instruction. She notes Seymour Papert’s foreword to Smith’s book and weighs each author’s contribution to the search for better mathematics teaching.
Twenty Reasons Why You Should Use Boxer (Instead of Logo) – A. A. diSessa
diSessa, Boxer’s creator, argues that Boxer improves on Logo through principles of naive realism and spatial metaphor, offering visible, editable procedures and variables, ports, object-oriented and activation-oriented programming, and integrated tools and networking. He walks through twenty specific advantages, from a lower learning threshold and higher ceiling for advanced projects to Boxer’s support for collaborative work and community tool-sharing.
Letters to the Editor – Seymour Papert and Cleborne D. Maddux
Seymour Papert writes to thank the contributors of a prior issue devoted to his work and promises further reflections in future columns. Cleborne D. Maddux responds to an earlier editorial on Logo research, noting that his own textbook on educational computing does address Logo, including a dedicated chapter.
Simulating Artificial Life with Logo – Bill Engel and Pat Greene
Engel and Greene present a step-by-step MicroWorlds Logo program in which a turtle simulates artificial life by moving, turning, sleeping, and eating to manage its energy level and survival. They build the simulation from small, independently testable procedures, culminating in a decide procedure that randomly selects the turtle’s next action each cycle.
In Their Own Words: Using Spezeski’s Poly.Round Procedure – John Hayes
Hayes builds a Rounded Polygons microworld around Spezeski’s set, arcr, and polyr procedures, designed to let students experiment with the number of sides, length, and radius variables of rounded polygons. He extends the concept with a nested-polygons variation that draws a regular polygon with progressively rounded versions inscribed inside it.
Starting with StarLogo: Auto Maze – Alan Epstein
Epstein shows how StarLogo’s multiple turtles can generate a maze automatically by wandering, stamping walls, and biasing their turning toward straight-ahead movement, then uses a second set of turtles to search the maze for a goal patch through random walking. He closes by inviting readers to think about an “edge walk” algorithm as an alternative, more directed solving strategy for a future column.
Logo: Search and Research: Research and Mathematics Education Standards – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Clements and Sarama recap James Hiebert’s analysis of what research can and cannot tell educators about mathematics standards, using the calculator-use debate as an extended example of the difficulty of proving one instructional approach superior. They then connect Hiebert’s findings to Logo research, outlining several characteristics of Logo that support students’ construction of mathematical knowledge networks.
For Beginners: 21st Century Logo Quilts – Gary S. Stager
Stager revives the classic Logo quilt-making activity, giving step-by-step instructions for building patch and block procedures in traditional turtle-graphics Logo. He then reimagines the project in MicroWorlds using turtle costumes as quilt-patch stamps, clickable buttons, and eventually a slider to control patch size.
Giving Meaning to Mean (and Standard Deviation, Too) – Tom Lough
Lough demonstrates how naming Logo procedures meaningfully, such as standard.deviation, variance, sum.of, and squared, can make abstract statistical formulas more comprehensible to students. He builds the procedures top-down from their definitions and extends the technique to compute the mean and an alternative residual-based variance formula.
The Last Word: Chipping Away at Mathematics – E. Paul Goldenberg
Goldenberg voices long-term worries about how computers and calculators reshape mathematics education, cautioning that useful side benefits of older computational techniques may be lost when technology replaces them. He warns that technology should remain the servant of sound mathematical goals rather than driving educational decisions through its own momentum and novelty.

Summer 1999 (Vol. 17, No. 4)

Sorry I’m Late (Editorial) – Gary S. Stager
Stager reflects on the challenges of assembling Logo Exchange, thanks longtime contributing editors, and announces that Alan Epstein is stepping down from writing the StarLogo Starters column. He also pays tribute to three recently deceased friends of the Logo and educational computing community: Jan Hawkins, Dave Kressen, and Stephen Marcus.
Logo Y2K (Quarterly Quantum) – Tom Lough
Lough playfully explores whether the impending Year 2000 rollover could cause problems for Logo turtles, testing custom procedures against distance and timer values as a mock “challenge problem.” He reports finding no serious glitches and wonders whether some classroom “problems” with Logo turn out to be similarly overblown.
Teacher Feature: Hope Chafiian – Jeff Richardson
Richardson interviews Hope Chafiian, computing teacher at The Spence School in Manhattan, about her path from banking and child-development studies into Logo teaching. Chafiian discusses how turtle geometry first captivated her and how her students’ own goals continue to drive the Video Game Workshop project she runs with Michael Tempel.
Book Review: Points of Viewing Children’s Thinking – a point of view! – Carolyn Dowling
Dowling reviews Ricki Goldman-Segall’s multimedia book, which combines dense academic text, video, and interactive web pages to present an ethnographic study of children’s thinking. She finds the work demanding but richly rewarding, praising its integration of ethnography, media theory, and learning research into a genuinely new “point of viewing.”
MindFest (Logo News) – Uncredited
This news item announces MindFest, an October 1999 festival at the MIT Media Laboratory celebrating construction kits like LEGO MINDSTORMS and playful learning through exhibitions, panels, and hands-on workshops. It invites kids, educators, researchers, and hobbyists to bring their own creations and to help shape festival sessions.
First Impressions of MicroWorlds Pro (Logo News) – Ray Catzel
Catzel previews MicroWorlds Pro, highlighting new features such as Web authoring tools, mouse-driven animation, Microsoft Word spell-checking, Excel charting links, and an improved single-window interface. He argues the software will appeal both to teachers building lesson projects and to younger students creating their own, while preserving compatibility with earlier MicroWorlds files.
Logo in Your Pocket! (Logo News) – Timothy Lipetz
Lipetz introduces TinyLogo, a free programming environment with turtle graphics for Palm handheld computers that lets beginners write and run procedures directly on the device. He notes it includes over 75 built-in commands, supports exchanging programs via memos, and is available from several Palm software download sites.
Books Loved by Logo Lovers – Tom Lough, Jeff Richardson, Michael Tempel, Alan Epstein, Susan Ohanian, Brian Harvey, & Gary S. Stager
Several Logo Exchange contributors each recommend a favorite book, ranging from Covey’s Seven Habits and Kawasaki’s Selling the Dream to Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Solomon’s Computer Environments for Children, and Resnick’s Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. The picks also include critiques of educational standards culture by Ohanian and Alfie Kohn and Herndon’s How to Survive in Your Native Land, reflecting the community’s wide-ranging intellectual influences.
Starting with StarLogo: Advances in StarLogo – Uri Wilensky & Mitchel Resnick
Wilensky and Resnick announce the release of StarLogoT2.0 for Macintosh, detailing new histogramming and statistics primitives, an interactive dialog feature, expanded documentation, and several bug fixes. They also describe the debut of a Java-based StarLogo prototype for PCs that introduces separate turtle and observer interfaces and simplified patches.
My Favorite Things: A Web-based Logo Project – Stephen Costa
Costa describes a MicroWorlds project in which Year 4 students created multimedia pages about their favorite possessions, incorporating scanned images, sound, music, and navigation buttons over a series of lessons. The finished projects were saved as HTML and distributed to the whole school community on a CD-ROM built with the MicroWorlds Web Player.
Geometric Skills: From Hands-On Manipulatives to the (LOGO) Turtle’s Path – Estella P. de los Santos and Barba Patton
The authors review decades of research on manipulatives and Logo’s effect on children’s geometric thinking, covering studies of angle misconceptions, van Hiele levels, and problem-solving transfer. They propose a sequenced set of hands-on manipulative activities paired with corresponding Logo turtle activities intended to prepare students for programming-based geometry instruction.
Logo: Search and Research – Logo and the Mathematics Education Standards – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
Clements and Sarama preview NCTM’s forthcoming Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, explaining its new technology principle, expanded grade bands, and electronic format. They highlight draft language that cites Logo directly as a way to make algorithms, subroutines, and variables concrete for elementary students.
Turtles of Differential Equations – Omar M.S. Hamed
Hamed presents a Logo-based approach to teaching introductory differential equations at King Saud University, using turtles in MicroWorlds to visualize slope fields for first-order equations. He also introduces a turtle-based variant of Euler’s method for approximating solutions to initial value problems, arguing it engages students more actively than a purely analytical lecture approach.
In Their Own Words: The Last Tragic Hours of the Titanic Animated – Jason Farr & Damien Baum
Two Australian Year 9 students describe building a MicroWorlds animation depicting the sinking of the Titanic, including research on the ship’s speed and lifeboat capacity that informed their project. They detail technical problems they solved, such as matching water levels across scanned images and hiding the ship beneath a color-matched “screen” as it sank, and include their animation procedure code.
The Last Word: When the Circus Comes to Town – Gary Stager
Stager contrasts the modest resources of a Logo-using teacher from Chile with the consumerist spectacle of a major American educational computing conference, arguing that commercial pressure undermines open-ended tools like Logo. He also recounts the abrupt firing of Hyperstudio creator Roger Wagner by his corporate parent as a cautionary tale about the software industry’s treatment of genuine educational innovators.

Volume 18 (1999)

Fall 1999 (Vol. 18, No. 1)

Happy Birthday Logo Exchange! (Editorial) – Gary S. Stager
Stager marks Logo Exchange’s eighteenth year of publication and recounts the success of Logosium ’99 in Philadelphia, including Seymour Papert’s surprise after-lunch keynote discussion. He also introduces the newly elected SIGLogo officers and previews upcoming coverage of new Logo software and classroom projects.
A Terminal Case of Logo (Quarterly Quantum) – Tom Lough
Lough uses a colleague’s offhand remark about “terminal degrees” at a faculty luncheon as a springboard for reflecting on lifelong learning. He reframes the terminal degree as a learner’s permit, arguing that Logo embodies this same open-ended, never-finished approach to learning.
Logo News – Logo Exchange Staff
This item announces registration details for the 2000 Logo Summer Institutes in New York and Colorado, covering the Logo Immersion and Logo Robotics strands. It also promotes a MicroWorlds-focused summer institute in Minnesota co-sponsored by the St. Paul Public Schools and the Science Museum of Minnesota.
The Art of LEGO Design – Fred G. Martin
Reprinted from The Robotics Practitioner, this article explains the structural and gearing principles behind LEGO Technic construction, covering beam-spacing relationships, gear reduction ratios, worm and bevel gears, and axle-support techniques. It closes with a gallery of “design cliches” and photographs of student-built LEGO robots from Logosium.
The ToonTalk and Playground Presentation at Logosium – Ken Kahn
Kahn recounts his Logosium session introducing ToonTalk, an animated programming environment, describing how a volunteer child worked through its puzzle-game challenges live before an audience that included Seymour Papert. He also previews the European Union-funded Playground Project, which lets children build video games atop ToonTalk and a new Slovakian Logo variant.
StarLogoT2000 Released (Starting with StarLogo) – Uri Wilensky
Wilensky announces the beta release of StarLogoT2000 for Macintosh, detailing new features such as turtle and patch arrays, individual command centers, and expanded documentation. He also previews the forthcoming cross-platform Java version known as N-Logo and points readers to the Connected Models library and support mailing lists.
The Y2K Explorer – Patrick Mahaney
A high school student describes building a remote-control robotic exploration vehicle from a modified R/C car, adding a grayscale pinhole camera on a pneumatically raised boom and controlling it through the LEGO Dacta Control Lab. He explains the pneumatic ram system used to elevate the camera arm and the custom on-screen controls that let users operate the vehicle without knowing the Logo language.
AgentSheets: End-User Programmable Simulations as Interactive Media – Alexander Repenning
Repenning introduces AgentSheets, a simulation-authoring tool built on agents, spreadsheet-style worksheets, and Java generation, illustrating it with the Bridge Builder simulation. He contrasts its tactile, drag-and-drop Visual AgenTalk programming approach with Logo’s textual tradition and describes how the Behavior Exchange supports collaborative simulation design.
AgentSheets 1.4b3 Released – Uncredited
This release announcement details new features in AgentSheets 1.4b3, including twist-down methods, documentation stickies, editable simulation properties, and Web-based project documentation, along with performance improvements to the agent dispatcher. It also promotes an accompanying CD-ROM of tutorials and announces the software’s upcoming official release at the MacWorld 2000 Expo.
Logo and High-Level Geometric Thinking (Logo: Search and Research) – Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
The authors examine Nicola Yelland and colleagues’ research on children using Turtle Math to solve geometry problems such as “Missing Measures,” tracing how student pairs shifted between visual estimation and numerical reasoning. They report pretest-to-posttest gains in students’ ability to calculate side lengths from a given perimeter and reflect on how the software’s immediate visual feedback supported that learning.
Use Multiple Pages and Animation Together, or Building Games in MicroWorlds Without Tears – Jeff Richardson
Richardson walks through a common MicroWorlds bug in which an animated turtle keeps running invisibly in the background after a page change, using a swimming fish and cave-entrance example. He shows how adding a CLICKOFF command to the turtle’s procedure stops and resets it properly before the page switches.
Add Next and Previous Navigation Buttons to Your MicroWorlds Pages – Gary Stager
Stager provides two short procedures, next and previous, that let users add page-navigation buttons to every page of a MicroWorlds project by computing adjacent page names from the project’s page list. He notes the required page-naming convention and warns against placing a next button on the last page or a previous button on the first.
Build a Temperature Sensitive Vending Machine – Michael Tempel
Prompted by a real vending-machine trial that would raise soda prices in hot weather, Tempel challenges readers to design a LEGO vending machine using ControlLab or the RCX that accepts coins and dispenses a product. He specifies that the machine should count deposited coins and adjust its price according to simulated temperature conditions.
What’s New in MicroWorlds Pro – Gary S. Stager
Stager surveys the newly released MicroWorlds Pro, highlighting its redesigned WYSIWYG interface with procedures, processes, graphics, and objects tabs, along with improved shape editing and one-click Web publishing. He also covers its ability to read and write Excel spreadsheets and notes the two companion books released alongside the software.
MicroWorlds Tutorial: Functions and Graphing – Gary Stager
This hands-on tutorial walks students through Logo reporters such as INT, ROUND, ABS, and MINUS before building procedures that generate x/y data tables and plot points on screen. It culminates in a challenge to write a self-limiting graphing procedure that starts at a screen edge and stops once x exceeds a set maximum.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire MicroWorlds Pro Style? – Anonymous and Gary Stager
A 15-year-old student, writing anonymously with Stager, explains a MicroWorlds Pro program that recreates the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game show using twentieth-century history trivia and an Excel spreadsheet as the question database. The article walks through procedures for selecting random unused questions, displaying answer choices, and flashing correct answers or reducing winnings when a contestant answers incorrectly.
Communicating with Excel – Uncredited
This sidebar accompanying the Millionaire article explains the three MicroWorlds Pro primitives used to exchange data with Excel spreadsheets: openworksheet, setcell, and getcell. It also introduces helper procedures for converting between Excel’s row-and-column addressing and Logo’s list-based references.

Last Logo Exchange (2015)

Last Logo Exchange (Spring 2015)

From the Founding Editor – Tom Lough
Tom Lough introduces this special 2015 tribute issue marking the symbolic close of Logo Exchange’s 117-issue run, explaining that it collects reflections from six former editors and columnists on the “old days,” the years after publication ceased, and hopes for the future. He thanks Michael Tempel and the Logo Foundation for scanning and posting all 117 issues online and for supporting this closing edition.
For Now or Forever? A Logo Reflection – Steve Tipps
Steve Tipps reflects on more than thirty years since discovering Logo alongside Glen Bull and Tom Lough, tracing the movement’s rise through the 1980s and its decline as standardized testing came to dominate schools. He closes by posing, rather than answering, the question of which aspects of Logo were lasting and which were merely “for now.”
Logo Revisited: A Historical Perspective – Glen Bull and Gina Bull
Glen and Gina Bull trace Seymour Papert’s three major contributions to educational computing, treating the computer as a “tutee” for thinking about thinking, building a language designed specifically for children, and connecting computers to control of the physical world, then walk through Logo’s turtle-graphics mechanics. They connect this history to descendant technologies like LEGO Mindstorms and Scratch, and to their own university engineering-design academies using 3D printing and Scratch-controlled automata.
Logo: Smiles, Sadness, and Hope – Dennis Harper
Dennis Harper recounts his doctoral research comparing Logo-using teachers across Malaysia, Senegal, and Los Angeles, then describes how No Child Left Behind and standardized testing eroded Logo’s constructivist promise in American schools in favor of test-prep software. He closes on a hopeful note, pointing to his Generation YES nonprofit’s model of empowering students as technology leaders.
In Memoriam: Sharon Yoder Burrowes Moursund (1942–2011) – Tom Lough
Tom Lough memorializes longtime Logo Exchange editor-in-chief Sharon Yoder, tracing her path from an Ohio farm upbringing through her eight years leading the journal beginning in 1987 and her work with LCSI and the University of Oregon. He remembers her determination and enthusiasm, and her role in bringing Logo Exchange to maturity as a refereed journal before her death in 2011.
Then and Now: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same – Dorothy Fitch
Dorothy Fitch traces her Logo career from developing Kinderlogo as a 1980s music teacher through her years as a Logo Exchange contributing editor and editor-in-chief, and later work in assistive technology, back to teaching Kinderlogo and Bee-Bot robotics at an Arizona elementary school after 2009. She revisits specific activities from old Logo Exchange issues that she rediscovered online and describes reusing them with her current students.
The End? – Gary Stager
Gary Stager recounts his path from a 1980s Logo teacher and “Stager’s Stuff” columnist to Logo Exchange editor-in-chief in 1997, and criticizes ISTE’s unexplained cancellation of the journal and its Logo special interest group in 1999 amid a broader shift toward standardized testing and corporate ed-tech. He closes by pointing to Scratch, MicroWorlds, and his Constructing Modern Knowledge institutes as evidence that Logo’s constructionist spirit continues.
Logo: A Springboard to the Future? – Tom Lough, Founding Editor
Tom Lough narrates the full origin story of the National Logo Exchange, from its 1982 founding with Glen Bull and Steve Tipps through its growth, its 1986 merger with the International Logo Exchange into Logo Exchange, and its later editors Sharon Yoder, Dorothy Fitch, and Gary Stager. He closes with a “where are they now” survey of former contributors and an account of reuniting with Linda Nix, the newsletter’s very first featured teacher.
And in Conclusion… – Tom Lough
This closing page lists nearly 300 contributors who wrote articles and columns for the National Logo Exchange, International Logo Exchange, and Logo Exchange across their combined 117-issue run. Tom Lough thanks them, along with subscribers, web readers, and the Logo Foundation, for making the publication’s legacy possible.

International Logo Exchange, Volume 1 (1986)

January 1986 (ILX Vol. 1, No. 1)

Welcome to the ILX! – Dennis Harper
Recounts the founding story of the International Logo Exchange, tracing it to an impromptu 1984 gathering of educators from 26 countries at the Logo 84 conference. Outlines future plans including a global Logo bibliography, translations of key Logo works, and international tours to countries such as Iceland, the Netherlands, and China.
From the Publisher – Tom Lough
Welcomes charter subscribers to the new newsletter and introduces editor Dennis Harper and the team of field editors gathering Logo news from around the world. Reflects on the publisher’s own history founding the National Logo Exchange in 1982 and his enthusiasm for extending that work into a global network.
Latin America – Horacio Reggini
Reports on Logo activity in Uruguay, describing the “Centro Logo” research department’s teacher training programs and studies of children’s development with the language. Also traces the growth of Logo in Chile from early work with learning-disabled children to its spread into schools, teacher seminars, and a televised course.
Australia – Anne McDougall
Reports on the first Australian Logo conference, “Logo in Australia: Ten Years On,” held in Melbourne in August 1985, tracing the country’s Logo history back to 1976. Surveys presentations by figures such as Hal Abelson and David Squires on microworlds, curriculum applications, and teacher training.
Logo 86 Announced – Uncredited
Announces that the third annual international Logo conference, Logo 86, will be held at MIT in July 1986. Provides submission guidelines and deadlines for presentation and poster session papers.
Asia – Hillel Weintraub
Surveys Logo activity in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, drawing on material from a World Conference on Computers in Education session on Logo in Asia. Describes early experiments in Chinese schools and Children’s Palaces, Hong Kong’s computer literacy programs, and Logo teacher training efforts in Taiwan.
Europe – Richard Noss, et al.
Reports on an EEC-funded pilot project coordinating Logo practitioners across European countries and describes national developments in France, the Netherlands, and the UK. Also covers a Bulgarian education reform project pairing Logo with English instruction and criticizes a Scottish decision to recommend COMAL over Logo in secondary schools.
North America – Michael Friendly
Reviews recent North American Logo conferences, including Logo 85 and the World Conference on Computers in Education, highlighting international presentations and the Logo-Lego project at MIT. Also describes the CompuServe-based “On Line to Paradise” World Logo Conference and invites readers to share news electronically.
Africa – Fatimata Seye Sylla
Presents the Senegalese Logo research project, launched in 1982 with the Senegalese government, the World Center of Paris, and Seymour Papert. Details the project’s objectives, funding, and findings from experiments with children across different Dakar schools and social backgrounds.
Logo Materials Available from England – Uncredited (Featuring: Celia Hoyles)
Lists Logo-related publications available from the London University Logo Group, including a Logo Mathematics Project report and a study by Richard Noss on children learning Logo. Gives pricing and ordering information for interested readers.
BK to the USSR – Dennis Harper
Recounts the author’s lecture tour of four Soviet cities, describing visits to schools and universities and the state of computer education in the USSR. Discusses obstacles to introducing Logo there, including scarce hardware, teacher training gaps, and barriers to international communication.
ILX Announces 1986 Iceland – Netherlands Tour – Uncredited
Announces a two-week educational tour to Iceland and the Netherlands for Logo educators, led by Dennis Harper with local coordinators Anna Kristjansdottir and Harry Pinxteren. Details the itinerary, cost, graduate credit option, and registration information.
This ‘n’ That – Dennis Harper
Shares a roundup of brief international Logo news items, including an Arabic Logo translation effort, a Ukrainian-language Logo project, and reports from the West Coast Logo Conference. Previews upcoming contributions from Dan and Molly Watt’s China trip, David Thornburg’s world tour, and roving reporter Gerry Eddy.

March 1986 (ILX Vol. 1, No. 2)

But First – Uncredited
This opening editorial previews the issue’s contents, including reports on Logo conferences in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Mexico City, a new Dutch Logo version, and a West African literacy project. It also announces upcoming ILX study tours to Iceland and the Netherlands and to the World Conference on Thinking in Honolulu, closing with a Seymour Papert quote on culture and technology.
Forward 100! Australia: Logo Books from Australia – Anne McDougall
This column surveys commercially published Australian Logo books, starting with Learning Logo on the Apple II by McDougall, Tony Adams, and Pauline Adams and its German and French translations. It also describes the Let’s Talk Turtle series by Judy Nevile and Carolyn Dowling, the forthcoming How Turtles Talk, and Thinking with Logo by Valerie Clarke and Susan Chambers.
Forward 100! Asia – Hillel Weintraub
This column reports on a surge of Logo activity in Japan, including the Computers For Learning conference in Tokyo where Seymour Papert demonstrated a lesson turning children into teachers, and new Lego-Logo workshops run by Logosome Z’s. It also describes Logo classes at Tokyo’s National Children’s Castle guided by psychologist Naomi Miyake and Yamaha Corporation’s experimental classes exploring links between music and computer education.
Forward 100! North America: Conference Watch – Michael Friendly
This column recounts the West Coast Logo Conference in Los Angeles, where Seymour Papert and Brian Silverman unveiled a prototype word-processing version of Logo code-named “Goofy,” later announced as LogoWriter. It also previews the ECOO SIG-Logo mini-conference in Toronto and the Logo 86 conference at MIT, and invites readers to share their own regional Logo news.
LogoWriter Announced – Uncredited
This brief news item announces Logo Computer Systems Inc.’s new LogoWriter product, which combines the LCSI Logo language with a programmable word processor. It notes that the software supports text and graphics with up to four turtles sharing the same screen and gives an address for requesting a free information packet.
Forward 100! Africa: Computers and Illiterate Women – Fatimata Seye Sylla
This column describes the author’s field study teaching Logo to illiterate Senegalese women in Dakar using an Apple IIe, in which the women used Logo’s graphics to draw and learn French letters, syllables, and numbers. It reflects on the women’s growing confidence and their hopes of using literacy to find jobs, help their children with schoolwork, and support their communities.
Forward 100! Europe – Richard Noss, et al. (Featuring: Harry Pinxteren)
This column profiles the government-funded Netherlands Logo Center in Nijmegen and its LCN Logo project, a plane-based visual editor resembling BOXER that unifies editing, evaluation, and debugging in one interface. It also announces that center director Harry Pinxteren will host the ILX’s upcoming Iceland and Netherlands study tour and lists forthcoming conferences in Australia and Hawaii.
Forward 100! Latin America – Horacio Reggini (Featuring: Daniel Orey)
This column describes two Argentine Logo programs, a computer laboratory serving physically and mentally handicapped children at Buenos Aires’s Italian Hospital and the teacher-training-focused Bayard Institute. It closes with Daniel Orey’s report on the Simposio Internacional de Computacion Infantil in Mexico City, which highlighted Mexican initiatives such as microcomputer labs in public libraries and children’s computing work at UNAM.
ILX Roving Reporter – Gerry Eddy
Writing from England during a round-the-world bicycle sabbatical, Eddy discusses how government funding cutbacks and teacher discontent have slowed Logo’s spread despite the long-awaited release of full Logo for the BBC computer. She highlights promising control Logo projects, including a realistic traffic light built and programmed by Janice Staines’s ten-year-old students, and lists British teachers open to correspondence with ILX readers.

May 1986 (ILX Vol. 1, No. 3)

Logoites on the Move – Dr. Dennis Harper
The editor surveys Logo educators traveling internationally, including Daniel Orey’s trip to Guatemala, Fatimata Seye Sylla’s move from Senegal to Boston, and upcoming Logo research trips to China. He also announces his own relocation to take a three-year faculty post at the Institute of Education in Singapore, from which ILX will now be edited.
Logo Schools being Planned by UNY Company – Hillel Weintraub
This Asia column examines how the Japanese retail company UNY, through its Bynas division, is developing prototype Logo courseware and piloting experimental schools in Tokyo and Nagoya ahead of a planned franchise chain. It also explores why Japanese companies rather than schools have led Logo adoption, citing the Ministry of Education’s centralized control, while highlighting teachers like Ms. Suzuki and Mr. Totsuka who have found ways to bring Logo into their classrooms.
Logo Networking – Michael Friendly
This North America column describes electronic Logo communities, including Jim Muller’s LogoForum on CompuServe with its data libraries and on-line conferences, and the Logo Conference Tree teleconferencing system serving Claremont-area schools. It also discusses BITNET and other academic computer networks as lower-cost alternatives for Logo educators to exchange ideas across the world.
Romancing the Turtle: Using Logo in Multicultural Environments – Daniel C. Orey (Featuring: Horacio Reggini)
Guest-writing in Horacio Reggini’s Latin America column, Daniel Orey reflects on introducing Logo to culturally distinct groups of children in Guatemala, comparing middle-class Ladino students in Bananera with Highland Maya children in Patzun. Drawing on Robert Sternberg’s theory of intelligence, he argues that cultural context shapes how children experience Logo activities without implying any group’s approach is inferior.
Logo and Illiterate Adults – Fatimata Seye Sylla
In the concluding half of a two-part study, Sylla compares her Logo training of women in Dakar, Senegal with a parallel project among Hispanic immigrant women at a Boston learning center. She contrasts the two groups’ differing fears and expectations of computers, their shared cultural patterns of sharing and collaboration, and the confidence and literacy gains each group experienced through Logo work.
Logo and Mathematics Education in Israel – Richard Noss
Reporting on information supplied by Uri Leron, this Europe column details Logo-related research at the Technion in Haifa, including course units linking Logo functions to mathematical concepts and comparisons between turtle geometry and standard mathematics. It also covers a newly funded national Logo centre in Israel and related graduate-level Logo work at Tel Aviv University led by Tamar Globerson and Shafee Givon.
Australian Logo Resource Materials – Anne McDougall
This Australia column reviews locally produced Logo resources, including the POAIL journal for external diploma students, Alan Biggs and John Skewes’ lesson-plan booklet for primary and post-primary schools, and a Queensland kit on problem solving and spatial knowledge for independent learners. It provides ordering details and pricing for readers wishing to obtain each resource.
ILX Notes of Interest – Uncredited
This roundup announces upcoming events and organizations of interest to Logo readers, including the British Logo User Group’s August 1986 conference in Birmingham and the Ill International Symposium on Computers and Children’s Education in Puebla, Mexico. It also notes the COMAL programming language’s turtle graphics features and the International Council for Computers in Education’s new special interest group for computer science teachers.

July 1986 (ILX Vol. 1, No. 4)

Butfirst – Dennis Harper
The editor reflects on relocating to Singapore and teaching a new preservice course on computers in education, and recounts a stopover in Japan visiting Setsuko Abe, Hiroyoshi Goto, and Hillel Weintraub. He points to early signs that ILX is achieving its goal as an international clearinghouse, citing a Liberian professor connecting with Senegal’s Logo project through the newsletter.
Africa – Fatimata Seye Sylla
The column reports on emerging Logo interest in Liberia, where a consultant is pursuing UNESCO funding after learning of the Senegal project through ILX, and on Kuwait’s Al Alamiah Software Division, which is Arabizing Logo and other software to fight regional “technological fear.” It also describes the Senegal Logo project’s popular display at Dakar’s international computer exhibit, which drew television coverage and renewed parental interest.
Australia – Anne McDougall
The column presents two small research projects involving robot turtles, one by Adam Korab comparing floor-turtle and screen-turtle activities with 5- and 6-year-olds to measure effects on skills like left-right discrimination. The second, by Fred Fung, explores using a Logo robot environment to help adult spastic students develop navigation and left-right skills relevant to wheelchair use, reporting encouraging pre- to post-test gains.
Europe – Richard Noss
The column details Spain’s Atenea Project, a Ministry of Education initiative to introduce computers and a standardized Spanish-language Logo into schools alongside a two-phase teacher-training program. It notes rapid growth of Logo activity in Spain, including new magazines and books, and anticipates a “qualitative leap” as thousands of teachers are trained over the coming year.
Latin America – Eduardo Cavallo & Patricia Dowling
The column covers Gerard Bossuet’s visit to Buenos Aires institutes, a Logo Friends’ association meeting in Mar del Plata, and plans for a new gathering in Santa Cruz. It also reflects on the Second International Logo Congress of South America held in Montevideo, highlighting presentations from Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina and new Spanish-language Logo publications unveiled there.
Asia – Hillel Weintraub (Featuring: Setsuko Abe)
Guest contributor Setsuko Abe discusses a series of Lego & Logo workshops held in five Japanese cities, in which children built motorized Lego models controlled with basic turtle-graphics commands. She reflects on the difficulty of fitting such creative, exploratory work into Japan’s exam-driven school culture, while expressing hope that the workshops foster cooperation over competition among students.
Lego and Logo at MIT – Uncredited
This brief notice announces that Steve Ocko and Mitch Resnick will lead a Lego and Logo workshop as part of the Logo 86 conference at MIT in July. It directs interested readers to the MIT Special Events Office for registration details.
North America – Michael Freindly
The column surveys North American Logo networking developments, including a new Logo forum on BIX led by Mark Guzdial and Lary Alexander, updates to CompuServe’s LogoForum data libraries, and a proposed catalog of Logo microworlds coordinated with Rina Cohen. A “Conference Watch” section recaps the SigLogo and ECOO conferences, featuring talks by Paul Goldenberg, Michael Tempel’s Logo-Writer demonstration, and Brian Harvey and Peter Skillen’s presentations, and previews the upcoming Logo 86 conference at MIT.
International Logo Study Tour Information Needed – Uncredited
This article explains that a planned Iceland/Netherlands Logo study tour was cancelled for lack of participants and proposes three new tours for 1987 to Singapore/Malaysia, Japan/China, and Fiji/Australia, each combining school visits, conferences, and sightseeing. It invites readers to complete an interest survey to gauge demand before further planning proceeds.
A Note from Tom Lough – Tom Lough
Tom Lough announces that he has reached an agreement for Meckler Publishing of Westport, Connecticut to acquire both the National Logo Exchange and International Logo Exchange, citing the newsletters’ rapid growth beyond what he could manage independently. He notes that Dennis Harper and the field editors will continue producing regular content while he moves into the role of editor-in-chief.