Technology and school change: New lamps for old?

Childhood Education, 1995 by Clements, Douglas H, Swaminathan, Sudha

Other programs allow children to create pictures with geometric shapes. Children using these programs demonstrate increased knowledge of and competence in working with concepts such as symmetry, patterns and spatial order. Some children quickly discover how to create new shapes from the ones provided by the computer, thereby demonstrating a higher-order awareness (Wright, 1994).

Programming with Logo(TM) can also provide challenging learning experiences. In Logo, children give commands to direct an on-screen turtle to draw shapes. Primary-grade children who have used Logo demonstrate greater understanding of shapes and the meaning of measurements (Clements & Nastasi, 1993).

For example, while drawing a face in the Turtle Math(TM) program (Clements & Meredith, 1994), Nina decided to use just 200 turtle steps to draw her "mouth with a smile" (see Figure 2). (Figure 2 omitted) Off-computer she wrote a procedure in which the rectangle was 40 steps long and 20 steps wide and the sides of the equilateral triangles were 10 steps. She realized that the total perimeter of these figures was 20 steps short of 200 and tried changing just one side of each triangle to 20. Running these procedures on the computer, Nina remarked that changing the length of one side "messed up" an equilateral triangle and consequently the smile's image. She had to decide whether to compromise on the geometric shape or the total perimeter. Her final "mouth" was a rectangle of 200 steps and equilateral triangles of 60 steps made the "smile."

Other children may need teacher assistance to link their knowledge of mathematics to their computer work as well as Nina did. Teachers can ask children to reflect on their work, especially the times when the computer does something other than what they want. Such reflection can promote greater self-monitoring and may encourage children to find computer "bugs" themselves (Clements, Nastasi & Swaminathan, 1993).

Logo sometimes can be difficult for young children to comprehend. Problems do not occur, however, when children are gradually and systematically introduced to the environment and when the microworlds are age-appropriate (Clements, 1983/84; Cohen & Geva, 1989; Watson, Lange & Brinkley, 1992). In fact, these children were able to transfer their knowledge to map-reading tasks and interpreting right and left rotation.

Exploration of Logo environments offers a wide variety of logical and mathematical experiences. For instance, 5-year-old Daniel showed signs of comprehending and interpreting the links between a symbolic representation and its written procedures. His teacher had written procedures that caused a turtle robot's sounds to alternate at the press of the "S" key. Interpreting this as the turtle's speech, Daniel asked for other procedures to which he assigned various meanings. He eventually produced his own turtle vocabulary (Wright, 1994).

Logo can also positively affect children's creativity. Following Logo use, young children's verbal and figural creativity off-computer improved (Clements, 1994). Children with learning disabilities using Logo made progress in certain mental and emotional areas (Klausmeier, 1992). Similarly, Logo enhanced the self-esteem, creativity, planning and executing abilities of children with mild intellectual handicaps. The program also provided opportunities for working independently but cooperatively.