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The creators of Logo believed so strongly in this approach that the MIT lab, where Logo was thought, had a actual mechanical turtle-making the computer culture as concrete as it can be. In the case of Logo, children are placed in a world where there is a turtle that moves in a two-dimensional plane and is able to draw lines while moving. In that way, children can build their own intellectual structures from an environment that they know. The book states that children should be immerse in a “computer culture” that they are familiar with. For instance, a child usually learns the properties of liquid when they pour it on the floor. The book is built on the Piaget‘s principle that children create their own intellectual structure from the material they find around them-often referred to as culture.

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If the code is divided into modules, children can focus on repairing the errors related to a single module without having to understand the rest of the code found in the other modules-after all, a module is ideally conceived as a self-contained unit of code. By showing that modularity alleviates debugging, children have a practical and genuine motivation for writing modular code.

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Repairing a big chunk of code is indeed challenging, not only for children, but also for professional programmers.

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Now, have you ever wondered how to teach a 10 years old kid such an advanced concept? In this matter, the book is enlightening: children should learn the value of modularity as an aid for debugging. For example, if you write a program that sells products online, the code could be divided into the modules to handle payments, to display products, and to administrate customers. Modularity as a necessity to repair codeĪ modular program is one that subdivides the code into smaller, reusable, independent parts called modules.

Students should not be scared of failing, the very nature of learning programming consists more about repairing code than getting it right at once. The fact that programming works like this makes a difference: students are welcome to try, after all, everyone is surely getting it wrong in the beginning.

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Students (and even professional programmers) do not often get their code free of errors in their first try. If compared with learning mathematics, where students often feel that they either “got it” or “got it wrong” (a binary cruel classification), learning programming is about try and error. No fear for programmingĪnother insight I found relevant in the book is the fact that teaching programming is an inclusive activity.

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While knowing how to use computers is important, children should also be empowered to instruct computers to carry out tasks in the way that their imagination determines, i.e., without being limited or restricted by pre-established software and user interfaces. In other words, computers are currently indoctrinating, i.e., programming, our children. However, it is the computer that decides how children should interact with it. It is a reality that children learn “the way of the computer” in no time. Children quickly learn how to launch applications, overcome obstacles by leaning the tablet slightly to the right, switching between games with a push of a button, etc. Nowadays, smartphone and tables are often loaded with applications designed to entertain children-in fact, parents use them as a sort of XXI century pacifier. Below, I briefly describe the most relevant insights I got from the book.

Logo is a programming language for education created in the 60s, and while the book was firstly published in 1980 (and a second edition in 1993), I found the book’s principles and ideas still applicable today. While randomly discussing about teaching programming at schools, a colegue of mine ( Ezequiel Gutesman) pointed out to me the book MindStorms by Seymour Papert, one of the creator of Logo. For that, Martinéz Lopez participated in the creation, design, and implementation of a new programming language called Gobstones. Martinéz Lopez, who is part of the effort program.ar to push programming at the public schools in Argentina. Jones (co-creator of Haskell) among its collaborators. As a concrete example, I can cite the Computing at School initiative to promote programming at schools in the UK, which has Simon P. Recently, there has been considerable efforts to push computer programming to elementary and high schools. Could we leverage these computers to improve education, innovate on teaching methods, and help students at school? I firmly think that the answer is yes! The key relies on teaching children how to program computers, a mental and creative activity. Nowadays, computers are truly ubiquitous and accessible to children, e.g., iPads are used at certain kindergartens in Sweden.

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