Logo Creates Enthusiasm for Higher Level Math
Professor Meiyu Fu has spent many years
working with Logo as a middle school teacher and education consultant in
the province of Guizhou, China. She first became aware of Logo as a
second year math teacher in 1984 and went to a training where Logo was
presented. She quickly saw the connections between the Logo turtle and
the math concepts she was teaching and brought Logo back to her school
to explore the possibilities.
She introduced Logo to her students and was pleased to see that they liked working with Logo and that writing Logo procedures facilitated learning the math concepts she was responsible for teaching. By using Logo, she was able to convert many of her students from disliking math to becoming math enthusiasts. In many cases, such as the one illustrated below, her students didn’t even realize they were doing high level math!
Prof. Fu used Logo to assist in teaching all of the subjects covered in middle and high school math in China, including geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. By challenging her students to write procedures using the Logo turtle to solve their math problems, she was able to provide a hands-on learning environment with real experience in higher level math concepts for her students that made the ideas stick.
The approach of using Logo to teach math garnered considerable success. Students became much more enthusiastic about math classes and overall scores on math tests improved. In 1988, Prof. Fu’s public school in the interior produced a national math champion, an unusual occurence in China. In 1991, another student at the school achieved the highest score in math on the university entrance exam. Prof. Fu credits these results to her students’ experience learning math with Logo.
There were no Logo classroom materials or textbooks available in
Chinese, so Prof. Fu developed her own along with a wide range of Logo
example programs illustrating math concepts she was teaching in middle
school. In addition to using the materials in her own classes, she has
published two Logo books, one in conjunction with her sister, which are
listed in Terrapin’s bibliography and used throughout
Guizhou province.
Subsequently, Prof. Fu formed the Guizhou Institute of Basic Math Creative Education Technology, which she serves as president, to promote the use of Logo in teaching math in Guizhou and other provinces of western China. The Institute offers teacher training and continues to do research on using Logo and computer technology to offer better ways to teach mathematics.
In May 2008, Prof. Fu traveled to Michigan State University to the Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education where she presented her work with Logo and the success she has had using Logo to teach math in China.
Prof. Fu sent us this greeting that she created using Logo to celebrate Chinese New Year. Watch the short video to see the greeting being created. (The video is in Chinese, but even if you don’t speak the language it is fun to watch.)
Contact Information
| Name | Meiyu Fu |
| Position | President |
| School | Guizhou Institute of Basic Math Creative Education Technology |
| Location | Guizhou, China |
| Address | No. 3, Maoteng Lane, Shaungfeng Road, Guiyang, Guizhou 550003, China |
| fmy2003@163.com | |
| Tags | Logo, Math, Asia |
| Age | Grade 6–12 |