Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Natural Sciences

Department of General Computer Science

HUNGARY

Abstract: Teaching future teachers the educational use of computers can sometimes become a commanding job of reasoning. After many years of studies in PASCAL, programming methodology, data structures, etc. it is difficult for them to understand why is it not pure computer science that they are to teach in schools of average setting. It is even more difficult to reason WHY Logo? On the other hand fancy multimedia educational software shades the necessity of teaching any kind of programming language. WHY Logo then? Even creating educational software is better be done by multimedia authoring tools. The paper describes my attempt to answer the question: WHY Logo? The issues covered are illustrated through glimpse of visual studies.

Keywords: teacher training informatics education, reading & writing, problem solving, mixing media, visual arts

Computers are all over and around us. They operate as tools in practically all types of workplaces. They serve us in our everyday lives. They co-ordinate, navigate, and protect us in our daily routines. How frightening this all sounds. Are they the masters and we the slaves, or is it the other way around.

Man evolved through his fears and doubts about natural phenomenon. He strived hard to understand bit by bit WHY things happen around him. Gradually he overcame his fears about the uncontrollable force, got hold of the command button, and now his destiny is in his single finger.

Each child goes through the phenomenon of evolution while growing up. He has his fears and doubts about his surroundings. His curiosity motivates trial and error trails in this path to discover and concur. The WHY period starts very early and probably only the last breath triggers the final question.

Computers are mysterious creatures to those who pose surprisingly in front of them which results in avoiding any contact out of fear. The chances for avoiding computers today is equal to the chances of being able to breath underwater. Thus they are irrevocably our companions. One has to be the leader and the other the follower, it's either him or me. The outcome of the dual is determined by the assumptions of the other's move. Understanding the WHYs of the other provides the key to mastership, while lack of comprehension produces slaves.

Our generation programmed computers to act as they do, we should hand down the key to our children to assure continuity of control.

When is the proper timing for this? The sooner the better. The main question is instead: HOW?

Being part of our surroundings they should be discovered as any other object around us. Like the telephone, pressing a few buttons invokes a ring and results in a partner for conversation. Pressing the buttons on the computer invokes an event on the screen, a sound, or switches on a motor. Isn't this a wonderful game? Children enjoy playing games, and there are quite a few of them available. Each has a curtain environment where specified buttons, clicks or commands trigger events.

A lot of games carry an intention of mastering some knowledge about a specific theme. These educational games let grasp important ideas without "studying".

In my childhood my favourite storybooks were those that opened each page with a three dimensional scene related to the event, and characters could be moved around. Playing within the scene helps understanding the story. Children of today have their own favourite storybooks that allow characters to be moved around, they are called "living storybooks". Interactivity, sound pronunciations, and animation certainly produces better understanding and much more enjoyment in the process of learning to read. The use of digitised speech for the pronounciation of requested words and/or sentences contributes to the acquisition of reading at the very early stage (lettering-reading) [7] additional explanatory information of a requested word or expression enhances understanding of a more complex full story (understanding-reading) [11].

Writing with a computer is far easier than with pencil on a piece of paper. Keying in the letters means reading (or identifying) the letters of the alphabet, and finding (comparing) the equivalent on the keyboard to press after each other. Learning to write by reading is a process that produces quick results, and chains the letters into words giving a meaning to it. Cohen's Composition [6] program allowed children to produce static pictures on the screen by choosing words from a list offered in the program (global approach) or by typing them (analytical approach). The child could then move each picture by arrows to another position. After creating a scene, a story could be produced about the picture by typing in the known words, and at any point letters and words typed could be heard as often as desired. Cohen's researches proved that the program seemed to be promising for beginning readers in their mother tongue and for foreign language learning too [5].

By using the Logo language to accomplish similar tasks [9], extension of a pre-programmed microworld becomes easier. A simplified Logo microworld allows children themselves to create associations between words and their meaning [16,17]. Meanwhile, the process of creation is in itself enlightening.

There are different tools for solving different problems, but once you choose it to be a programming language, great caution has to be taken in picking the proper one to create Logo-Like learning situations [8]. As a first priority it definitely has to be suitable for the specific problem. Secondly, it has to be easy enough to master, not to distract attention from the problem itself. Thirdly, it should have the power of acting as a building block in order to construct further complexity. Logo is suitable for solving and understanding ideas from simple drawing structures [10], to complex problems of decentralised systems [14]. Effective problem solving techniques [13] can be implemented by the use of theorems in Turtle Geometry [1] in visual arts [15], understanding more complex structures by modelling with Logo [4].

Several brilliant softwares are available for scientific modelling. Each has an individual flavour. Those that allow creative construction and proper experimentation like Interactive Physics (®Knowledge Revolution) are powerful educational tools, while those that are more of a game like Incredible Machine (®Sierra) provide continuous motivation without noticing that something is "learned". Using Logo to create models allows insight to the backstage. Modelling the language itself can lead to valuable findings of language structure, limitations of artificial intelligence, and language driven animation [18,19].

As we see there is a lot of educational software that can be used for constructive learning, but none of them should be thought of as the substitute of the teacher, real life experimentation, or other media. Computer aided modelling has to be preceded by real life experimentation of observed subjects to understand their behaviour and record properties. The modelling itself builds on this knowledge and thus can be used as building blocks for more complex experiments in a safe environment provided that "hands-on" activities allow "heads-in" recasting experience with "play-back" possibilities [2]. Finally the abstract knowledge attained by such experiments provides the basics for real time constructions according to the investigated.

Playing around with media seems to be of great value in art education as well [3]. Scanning an artwork made by conventional techniques, converting it to the computer media and enhancing it digitally. Then printing it out on paper and amplifying it by application of two or three dimensional techniques inspires creative pieces of artwork [20].

Hopefully the original question has been answered at each point. Custom-tailored educational software has its own attractive appeal together with its boundaries. Only an authoring tool can provide the flexibility of environment extension and the ease with which it can be done guarantees the possibility of these extensions to be made by the learners themselves. Authoring a project permits trial and error in construction to attain an understanding of HOW things work within a system. Definitely, the effects of Logo should not be looked at in context of an individual learner, but with its underlying philosophy of learning should be considered as an alliance of intellectual trends [12]. Such a friendly alliance will break down our fears and help us navigate in our over computerised world.