The Great Logo Adventure: Discovering Logo on and Off the Computer

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff for 4th and 5th graders
Review: I bought this for my fourth grade son who normally hates all school work. There is math, geometry, and logical thinking skills taught in this book. He loved it because he could do things right away and didn't have to plow through lots of boring difficult reading to get there.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff for 4th and 5th graders
Review: I'm going to assume that anyone reading this review will want to know two things: What is Logo? How well is this book written? I'll start by saying that IMO this is the best book out there which teaches basic computer programming skills--and it just happens to be in the Logo language. (age appropriateness: kids somewhere between elementary and junior high)It comes with a CD and has LOGO software on it for Windows/Dos/Mac/etc.

I have a couple of young kids and I wanted to teach some computer programming to them. I'd love to teach them some assembly and C++ but those languages are complex and huge. I figured they'd become bored -- get mired down in the rules and regulations of the language without experiencing the fun of programming. What LOGO does so well is get people programming without getting bogged down by the language. I have to add that I was under the misconception that LOGO was a whimpy-kiddie language...sure,great for teaching programming to kids, but shallow and limited. I mean, not too many universities preach LOGO, right! But LOGO is robust and extremely versatile in its own right. Go ahead, build robots, weather stations, etc.,...it makes doing these kinds of projects inviting and fun. You might misplace the TV in the house for a while!

Lastly, if you want to start with a little more advanced LOGO (maybe you have a background in a comp lang already-ie. BASIC, your in HS or older)then turn to Brian Harvey's "Excellent Adventure"

(wink, wink)--"Computer Science Logo Style-2nd ed"--vol 1,2,3. This series does for the older student what J. Muller does for the younger. I'm rating "The Great Logo Adventure" 4.5 stars--I don't give 5 stars because I believe there is always room for improvement; but darn if I know what to improve.

Rating:
Summary: Begin the Adventure ....
Review: I'm going to assume that anyone reading this review will want to know two things: What is Logo? How well is this book written? I'll start by saying that IMO this is the best book out there which teaches basic computer programming skills--and it just happens to be in the Logo language. (age appropriateness: kids somewhere between elementary and junior high)It comes with a CD and has LOGO software on it for Windows/Dos/Mac/etc.

I have a couple of young kids and I wanted to teach some computer programming to them. I'd love to teach them some assembly and C++ but those languages are complex and huge. I figured they'd become bored -- get mired down in the rules and regulations of the language without experiencing the fun of programming. What LOGO does so well is get people programming without getting bogged down by the language. I have to add that I was under the misconception that LOGO was a whimpy-kiddie language...sure,great for teaching programming to kids, but shallow and limited. I mean, not too many universities preach LOGO, right! But LOGO is robust and extremely versatile in its own right. Go ahead, build robots, weather stations, etc.,...it makes doing these kinds of projects inviting and fun. You might misplace the TV in the house for a while!

Lastly, if you want to start with a little more advanced LOGO (maybe you have a background in a comp lang already-ie. BASIC, your in HS or older)then turn to Brian Harvey's "Excellent Adventure"

(wink, wink)--"Computer Science Logo Style-2nd ed"--vol 1,2,3. This series does for the older student what J. Muller does for the younger. I'm rating "The Great Logo Adventure" 4.5 stars--I don't give 5 stars because I believe there is always room for improvement; but darn if I know what to improve.

Rating:
Summary: The Great LOGO Adventure: dixcovering Logo on and off the co
Review: This book is well written and the material easily accessible. My son was writing short programs in less than an hour. My one critique is that the book description claims that book includes PC and Mac software; while it does, the Mac is nowhere near as capable as the PC. The book alludes to this, but the book and Mac software do not jibe. We had to find other materials and still, the Mac software only allows for one turtle. Again, the material is well-presented, just somewhat misleading for Mac users.

Rating:
Summary: Not great, but none better
Review: This is the only book I have found that attempts to communicate programming (the "traditional" text based kind of programming) to elementary age children. If anyone reading this review knows of another, please contact me!

The book works after a fashion, with liberal corrections and advice from a highly available mentor. The parent/teacher must be a programmer to have any hope of guiding the elementary student through the various errors and omissions. Be careful of handing this book unsupervised to your child! It is full of questionable advice such as "draw on your computer screen with erasable marker", and references to files on the CD ROM that are in different directory, etc.