What People Say About Logo

Logo has now been available for 30 years and during that time has had an important impact on many different people in many different circumstances. Read about some of them below. See Customer Stories for more information on how Terrapin products are being used.

1. Barry Walker: “Logo was my first step to a very fulfilling career.”
2. Katherine Milner: “I liked it…It was fun.”
3. Jared Zhao: “I love logo and have become a ‘pro’ at it.”
4. James Clayson: “Logo introduced me into the constructionist community.”
5. Eva Kaplan: “The kids love programming in Logo”
6. Vicente Jiménez: “Logo is amazing and has no end.”
7. Ana Isabel Sacristan: “I LOVE Logo!”
8. Patrick Edmondson: “Nothing is so universally successful.”
9. Anjana Jain: “Wow, we had a blast.”
10. Gary McCallister: “It has been invaluable to me.”
11. Lucianne Brown: “An adventure I will never forget.”
12. Steve Phillippy: “Students in my Logo classes went on to study computer science and engineering.”

Barry Walker

I can’t believe you guys are still around. I was using your Logo on Apple ][’s when I was in the 5th grade (1981). I can remember how in-awe I was the first time I typed FD 50 a little triangle drew a straight line.

I’m a computer geek today (and making a pretty decent living) for 2 main reasons: Your version of Logo, and Infocom’s text adventure games. My love of programming definitely stems from the first time I made a virtual turtle move by typing FD 50. Logo was my introduction to loops, and logic, and opening my mind to an analytical way of thinking. It was my first step along the way to a very fulfilling career in software engineering.“

barrywalker@gmail.com, Burlington, MA

Katherine Milner

“I liked it. One time I did a spiral in the shape of a square, made steps, and made a little square on top of a big square. It was fun. We also learned each direction: FD forward, BK backward, RT right and LT left. All 19 students in my school, from kindergarten to third grade, use Terrapin Logo in computer lab.”

namerrill@gmail.com (7 years old), Spokane, WA

Jared Zhao

“I’m a student in Challenger School. I love logo and have become a ‘pro’ at it.”

jaredzhao@live.com, Utah

James Clayson

“I saw an ad for Logo in the sadly missed Byte magazine in the early 80s. Byte then ran a special issue on Logo in 1982. The language immediately struck my fancy. I wanted a computational tool to use in a course called Visual Thinking at Parsons School of Design in Paris and Logo seemed just right. The course mixed art, social science, economics, business and computer science students to explore ‘visual problems’ computationally. I wanted a language that would encourage these students, working in small mixed-discipline teams, to explore ‘visual problems’ and then to talk together about what went on. The results were surprisingly good. I got a book and many papers out of that experience. Terrapin was the first Logo I used.

“Logo introduced me into the constructionist community. I’ve used Logo for 30 years in my classes at Parsons and The American University of Paris. Logo, as the designers intended, encouraged me to see things and myself differently. I suddenly could see myself in the act of seeing. Too, Logo helped me to encourage my students to do the same. They then talked to me about their expanded vision methods and this was an enormous gift.”

james@clayson.org, Paris, France

Eva Kaplan

“The kids love programming in Logo and it’s the best way to teach the law of 360 degrees and geometry.”

evalkaplan@cs.com, Summer Camp Director, New Jersey

Vicente Jiménez

“In 1989 I was an English teacher and won a contest to study computer science in education. I used Logo for that and continued to use it through several versions. I fell in love with Logo because it is amazing and has no end. You can always construct more and more and there is no limit. I just wish there were more people in my country who used it.”

vicente1954@hotmail.com, Peru

Ana Isabel Sacristan

“As a student of a master’s programme in mathematics education we learned to program in Logo and also had to read Papert’s Mindstorms. I LOVE Logo! Few educational “softwares” are as good for learning and DOING mathematics. I still introduce it to my graduate students and most of them are fascinated by it. We discuss its relevance in the 21st century and most of them agree it is still a very valuable tool.”

asacrist@cinvestav.mx, Mexico

Patrick Edmondson

“In 1979 I was hired to teach a summer course for kids in BASIC and something called Logo. After watching kids get enthusiastic about learning for 6 weeks I was sold. I have been teaching Logo formally and informally ever since.

“In over 30 years teaching gifted and remedial kids, nothing is so universally successful in getting kids to problem solve and logically think through what they want as Logo. I still hear from students of 30 years ago how they still fondly remember Logo and want to introduce their own kids.”

mystere2@bellsouth.net, Atlanta, GA

Anjana Jain

“I was teaching grades 3–5 in a school in New Delhi, India. This was 1988–89. I was supposed to make computer education interesting for the little ones at a time when there was no color, graphics, music….

“And then came Logo with Commodore machines and wow, we had a blast. The fact that you could make the little triangular turtle move at your commands was amazingly interesting and challenging for kids. We made paper turtles with a hole to put on the finger. My students would get up and start to draw on the floor with their finger turtle to check what command should be given. Imagine the difference between learning logic with BASIC and learning logic with Logo. Logo was phenomenal. I used it as a teaching tool for many years. Currently I teach at the American Embassy School. I introduced Logo here a few years ago as a intro to programming language in my high school. My students love it.”

ajain@aes.ac.in, American Embassy School, New Delhi, India

Gary McCallister

“I was serving on the local school board in 1996 when I attended the annual Colorado Convention of School Board members. They had a book store in one room and I was browsing through the offerings. I picked up a book called Mindstorms, read the cover and leafed through the pages. I was shocked to find names that I had just been reading about in some books I was reading in my field: the Biological Sciences.

“I had just begun to delve into something called artificial life, a recent offshoot of artificial intelligence and robotics. The common language was LISP, but there was no one on my small campus that knew LISP so they could teach me and I was frustrated. But there in this little book I saw names like Papert and Minsky talking about education. I couldn’t pass that up and bought the book. This led me to my first Logo Foundation workshop in Minneapolis in 2000.

“I attended several other workshops over the next few years and ended up hosting one-week workshops in Colorado for about three years. In addition I taught Logo in to third graders in a local elementary school for three years and trained local teachers and principals. I also developed and taught a course in Artificial Life that we called Technobiology (as opposed to biotechnology) for the college where I teach. We used Logo instead of LISP. This was designed as an interdisciplinary course to explore the Biological sciences by synthesis instead of analysis. Then a new administration arrived on our campus and our support evaporated. But I still offer our course sporadically and teach individual students Logo programming. It has been invaluable to me for allowing me to understand both computer science and biology better. Besides, it’s great fun.”

mccallis@mesastate.edu, Mesa State University, Grand Junction, CO

Dr. Lucianne Brown

“New to technology, our district asked for volunteers to be trained in computers in 1984: 20 went and 4 remained. Our training was intermittent and we went up to the Kohl Center on the North side of Chicago. We wrote computer curriculum and then in 1986, I was the first teacher to teach computers in a rotational system for 9 weeks. We chose Logo and equipped the room with large monitors, a floor turtle, and computers.

“Before the 7th and 8th graders came into the classroom, I thought that Logo might be a little bit too young for them to use. After the first day of 150 students coming into the room, I was definitely wrong. Throughout the nine weeks they developed videos of the time, robotics the following year. A computer club focused on assisting younger children with Lego robotics. This lasted for 5 years. During that time, the motivation from programming in Logo, robotic discoveries, and music tones was an adventure I will never forget in my teaching career. They had numerous competitions, one being the tesselations and math patterns for deeper thinking. I developed rubrics for their project focused assessments with the students help. Some of us eventually got to MIT, where we were thrilled to be in the Lab with Seymour Papert.”

lucianne@gagatec.com, Orland School District 135 Orland Park, IL

Steve Phillippy

“I taught Logo in the 90s as a school volunteer. Many students in my Logo classes went on to study computer science and engineering, largely I believe, because of the introduction that Logo provided. I know that was the case with my daughter, who was one of the students and is now a computer science major at the University of Florida.”

steve_phillippy@acm.org, Tampa, FL