Logotacular is a colourful app to help you learn Logo, a programming language designed to assist in learning geometry and programming.
The most basic commands in Logotacular are the go forward command and the turn right command. You use these commands to control a small on-screen turtle, which draws a colourful path as it moves. You can change the background color, line color and the thickness of the lines drawn, as well as and raising/lowering the pen. Loops can be programmed by use of the repeat command which tells the turtle to execute a set of commands a specific number of times.
Variables are used to tell the turtle the value assigned to a letter, and functions (or procedures) are used to name a set of commands so that you can easily execute them later, all concepts useful in learning other programming languages! In this most recent version you can also use if statements for program control.
Logo was created in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert - researchers at MIT university. Their goal was to create an easy to learn application where kids could play with words and the structure of sentences. Later versions of Logo included on screen graphics and the forward and right commands to move an on-screen turtle around the screen. In 1969, a physical robot was designed which would move across the floor tracing its path with a pen. Seymour Papert pioneered its use in school classrooms as an educational system in the early 1970s.
* Learn about programming using an on-screen turtle
* Make colourful patterns as you learn about geometry and coding
* Understand variables, scope and loops
* Use functions (procedures), if/else statements and recursion
* Save your code and come back to it later