On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, William Chops Westfield wrote:

> So what does one use for teaching basic programming to kids these days.
> (pre-algebraic 5th graders, to be specific.)  I haven't heard anything
> about LOGO in a long time, and Pascal seems a bit dated and uncommon.
> Java?  Are there any good java books and/or environments aimed at kids
> this age?

Logo is alive and well, and available on my platforms of choice, for 
free, and in several flavors:

<http://klogoturtle.sourceforge.net/> - KDE/Linux
<http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/> - Windows, Mac, Unix, Other ...
<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh> - ucb logo
<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo-sample.html> - sample program for 
above (hey, it's actually prologish ;-)
<http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/> - another kde logo for Linux

<http://vpython.org/> - 3D logo, they say '3D Programming for Ordinary 
Mortals' - cool graphics - also in Pythonish dialect but very powerful
<http://vpython.org/vpythonprog.htm> - sample program

<http://ianbicking.org/docs/PyLogo_lightning.html> - in Python i.e. 
cross platform, but not really standard logo

A short write-up about LOGO with many links, including to a list of the 
original papers at MIT (on the bottom, very interesting):

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LogoLanguage>

Peter
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