Logobook feedback

Feedback for the introductory Logo book

This page is reserved for feedback for this as of yet unnamed introductory Logo book. It is not wikified, but that doesn't mean that I am not interested in hearing about other people's suggestions and corrections. To the contrary, I very eager to hear what you think of it and what aspects of it that can be improved.

Also, the book will be released under a CC license, so if you want to to fork a wiki version of it, by all means go ahead. I am not opposed to applying the wiki process when writing books, I just haven't seen very good results with it yet, so I decided to take another route when writing this one.

Comments, suggestions and corrections

Please go ahead and add anything that comes to mind.

The turtle drawing disappear after the concepts are explained, and can there be a kid's LOGO reference guide?

The turtle drawings are very nice, but eventually he disappears. Even if there are no new concepts in latter chapters of the book , he still could appear as a comic character? For example, on the chapter explaining how to do a circle, you could have the turtle continuously making a circle with the pen down, and getting dizzy from all that turning ? On the other hand, having him hanging around just for the sake of entertainment is a bit patronizing to kids, but putting him just a few more times wouldn't hurt?

I agree 100% that the turtle should occur in the latter parts of book as well, and he will. The reason he doesn't already is simply because David (the illustrator) hasn't gotten that far yet. I don't think illustrations are automatically patronizing just because they serve no other purpose than entertainment. A few wacky turtles could certainly have spiced up a couple of computer science books that I've read... Lethe

As I understand it, the book's main focus is a guide to get into and learn the ins and outs of Logo. But it could also be helpfull to have a reference guide at the end (or as a different project), so that a children could have both ways of learning: Learn Logo using this teaching aid, following its steps; and explore on his own, and throughout his explorations, go for this reference part for specific help, guidance, etc. This would also give a good training/experience on how to access and use reference knowledge in our (the kid's) pursuits in his life.

If the OLPC wiki standard permits it, the final version will have an interactive menu, where readers can click on a checkbox next to each chapter in the ToC which will tell them which chapters they have to read first in order to be able to read that chapter. Thus it will be simple for them to skip things they aren't really interested in. My intention has always been that readers should see the examples merely as that -- examples, and I try to emphasize that they can draw other things if they like, but maybe I haven't always been entirely successful in that.

I agree that a more comprehensive reference work would be great as well. However, I doubt I'll have time for that (deadlines for this project are appearing left and right now!). Maybe in a future version?

Also, I'd like to emphasize that the main goal isn't really to teach Logo per se, but a bunch of less easily quantifiable things, such as basic logical and visual thinking, that programming can be fun, that programming isn't scary etc. Lethe

Ah, I see.

Keep up the nice work!

Thanks, and thanks for the comments! Lethe

Oh, and I found about a freely redistributable spanish book called "Squeak: Un Mundo Para Aprender", intended for children as well, which might help in your book: [[1]] .

My Spanish is pretty poor (how did you know that I speak it at all?), but I'll have a look at it. Lethe

I didn't :) I like the appealing look of the chapters, so that was the main reason I gave the link, it could inspire a more "spiced up" look for your book.

Do you have any idea what Logo software will be used or is being developed for the laptop? I'm wondering about this because wouldn't it be excellent if the turtle program also used nice graphics like in the book? I like drawing myself, and, if in the future I can get more time (no promisses), I would like to do a top-view turtle with a pen on his hand (or attached to the back of his "shell"?), with the respective walk animation.

You may find this unbelievable (I do), but to the best of my knowledge (which means: I heard it from Sammy Klein), there is no Sugarized Logo distribution and nobody is currently working on creating one. Same thing goes for the Logowiki JS implementation: it's creators have moved on to other things with the interpretor left unfinished. Since Papert's ideas lies at the core of OLPC's goal, it is quite unthinkable that a working Logo version won't be included on the final laptops, but how that will actually come about is presently anybody's guess. If I had the time I would get to work on it myself, but I don't think I do.

I think animating the turtle is a nice idea. It has to be easy to switch off though, because eventually such things start getting in the way. I think there is some or several Logo distributions which animate the turtle by default, but I'm not sure. Lethe

When that time comes, I'll create a username in the wiki, and get in touch with you.

Why not create one right away? Right now only you and I are writing on this feedback page, but if other people start to do it too, this dialogue will get pretty messy. That's why I sign every comment even though it's currently obvious that I'm the author of it. Lethe

You mentioned deadlines as well. Do you know the "deadlines" for the logo software, so that I know if I can fit my idea/work before that time?

The next versions of software and texts should be finished by December 10. These will be used on the demonstration laptops in five countries. Lethe

Clem Rutter's feedback

Clem Rutter has sent me some very valuable feedback privately. It is too extensive to quote in its entirety, but an (overly brief) summary might be something like: write simpler sentences, introduce "repeat" and similar things earlier, draw more interesting things, go easier on the math, suggest projects larger in scale sooner. (To be clear: that's me summarizing Clem's input, not him.)

I have taken a lot of this to heart and will try to do a lot of the suggested changes in the coming days. Thus, be on the lookout for updates, small or significant. Lethe