a little introductory project

[WendyPetti@xxxx]

Hi... and welcome to the newest members of the MWcybercourse group. There 
are 25 of us now. You may wish to visit the message archive... although a 
good deal of the cybercourse discussion is continuing on the LogoForum 
mailing list, which is fine. 

I know it is going to take a good deal of planning to organize and create a 
cybercourse, but since we've got to start somewhere, I'll just plunge in. I 
know we haven't resolved where we will assemble the course materials, and 
most likely we'll move them to another location when the whole course is 
ready, but for the time being, I hope you don't mind if the materials I 
contribute are located on my own website; it's just a lot easier for me that 
way, and also they can be getting some use in the meantime.

Tonight I developed a little MicroWorlds project for online use which is 
intended to introduce brand-new users to writing the most basic of Logo 
commands (using rt, lt, and fd). Since the online version lacks a command 
center, the user types commands in a textbox and clicks a button which runs 
the contents of that textbox. The project draws random paths to a house, and 
the user guides the turtle along the path to the house. The project is 
called "follow a path."

I hope some of you will try it out and suggest improvements, either to the 
project itself or to the explanatory information on the project page and/or 
the accompanying project overview page (which includes the procedures). The 
explanatory material is NOT meant to be the introductory material in a 
MicroWorlds cybercourse but just enough info to let any user begin to write 
Logo commands. But I do not know if it is sufficiently clear. If any of you 
could get a few students to try it out without any verbal explanation, that 
would be good. If they've had no exposure to Logo--even better!

The URL is:
http://www.mathcats.com/microworlds/followapath.html

and as always, you do need the free MicroWorlds Web Player (the plug-in) in 
order to view and use online MicroWorlds projects.

Wendy Petti
Math Cats
http://www.mathcats.com