In the first two and a half chapters of this book the author, Seymour Papert, discusses computers, how they will change over time, and how computers have an impact on students. The author describes how computers have changed over time and how computers will continue to change. There is a possibility that everyone in the near future will have a computer or even more than one (which seems to be happening now). Computers are used for many different jobs and many different tasks. Teachers can also use computers in classrooms to help students practice exercises of their learning level, provide feedback, and then dispense the information. However, there are other types of computer culture, one is called LOGO. In the LOGO program, the student is in control. The LOGO program can be connected to Piaget through his concepts of concrete and formal thinking. The LOGO program has powerful ideas from physics, mathematics, and linguistics intertwined to help the player learn in a natural manner. As the students learn the program and move in the LOGO program children are challenging their own thinking and programming the computer to make more complex actions.
Students for many years and many years to come have been afraid of math and science because of numbers, equations, and letters. The LOGOs program was designed to helped students like math and science subjects. LOGOs starts with a turtle and the student learn how to move the turtle as they would move. For example: if the students want to make a square the students they either need to think in their heads or get out of their chairs and walk in a square then decide how they tell the turtle (programming) where to move; TO SQUARE, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, END. This type of program is called TURTLE GEOMETRY, it involves computations. The way the students give the turtle commands, like above, is called TURTLE TALK. Students are encouraged to move their bodies as the Turtle on the screen, to better understand the pattern. As students progress in the program they have the ability to draw circles, triangles, houses, etc.
There is a very important point to make in the LOGO program, when students make mistakes they are not criticized, instead they are encouraged to “debug” or fix the problem. LOGO also connects rhythm, movement, and navigation skills needed for everyday life.
So far, this book is very interesting and just skimming through the rest of the book it seems it gets extremely complex.
