About the Authors and This Version of Kinderlogo

Dorothy Fitch and Priscilla Flanagan met in the mid-1970s when they taught in an elementary school in Nashua, New Hampshire. Dorothy was the music specialist, with a burgeoning interest in computers and computer education; Priscilla taught first grade.

A few years later, after the school received its first computer (a 64K Apple), Dorothy embarked on a career change and became a computer education consultant. She opened a small computer classroom called Microschool and taught students as young as four years of age about computers, presented computer education workshops for teachers, and helped school districts design computer education curricula. During this time, she learned to program in BASIC, Pascal, and Logo. She and Priscilla became very excited about Logo and envisioned a version of Logo that would be appropriate for Priscilla’s young students. Thus, in 1984, Kinderlogo was born. Priscilla tested it with her first graders, Dorothy used it in her Microschool classes, and Terrapin published it.

Several years later, Dorothy became Manager of Product Development at Terrapin, creating new Logo products and editing materials by many other Logo authors. She also programmed robots, tested new versions of the Logo language, and authored its documentation. As editor of the Logo Exchange, an international journal, she worked with Logo educators and authors from around the globe. During this time, Priscilla was busy raising a family, but Kinderlogo remained on the market steadily until the late 1990s. By then, Dorothy was developing special education software for a different company.

Upon moving to the Tucson area in 2009, Dorothy accepted the position of running the computer lab at the local primary school, with over 700 K–2 students. One of her first actions was to explain Logo to the principal, who agreed to order not only Terrapin Logo, but also several Bee-Bot robots and Crystal Rain Forest from Terrapin.

Because Terrapin’s Logo language had evolved over the years, a new version of Kinderlogo was needed. Several changes were made based on Dorothy’s experience teaching in a computer lab setting. She was working with a new generation of children who were already computer-literate and a wealth of exceptional educational activities were readily available for free on the Internet. Some preliminary Kinderlogo activities that introduce the computer along with basic number and letter skills to children have been eliminated. New activities have been added.

The version of Logo that Dorothy was using in the computer lab would no longer would run on modern computers. So, she has now adapted Kinderlogo to run in the latest version of Logo, which runs in a browser. A couple of new activities have been added that take advantage of some of the new features of Logo.

Throughout its nearly 40-year life span (quite remarkable for a software product), Kinderlogo has always focused on the skills, concepts, and explorations that only Logo can offer children.

Two Generations of Kinderlogo Learners

These pages show many examples of students’ work. A lot of the pictures were from the original Kinderlogo guide, published in 1984. Other pictures were created by students at the primary school where Dorothy taught from 2009–2014. Although many of these these students used Kinderlogo years ago and others who more recently have been exploring major advances in technology, their Kinderlogo designs — created three decades apart — cannot be distinguished.

This is a true testament to the timelessness of Kinderlogo.