Re: Microworlds programs

[WendyPetti@xxxx]

> http://www.hvac.cc/kidscanprogram/main/tofc.htm

> http://www.hvac.cc/kidscanprogram/main/gallery.htm

Dale, thanks for pointing out the kidscanprogram site. I became familiar 
with it a couple of years ago, and I have some mixed feelings about it. 

1) Its creator, Don Sleeth, approaches MicroWorlds from the point of view of 
a programmer who has chosen MicroWorlds as a vehicle for teaching programming 
skills. He makes an interesting point about consistency as a desirable 
characteristic of a good program, but this means that his commands sometimes 
deviate from those of the typical Logo user. For instance, he favors the use 
of "thing." I have never seen "thing" used in Logo except by Don Sleeth, and 
even though I've exchanged e-mails with him about its use, and he has 
explained his reasoning, I still think it would confuse young programmers 
rather than enlighten them.

Where a typical Logo user might write:

to square :length
repeat 4 [fd :length rt 90 wait 1]
end

Don Sleeth writes:

to Square Length
repeat 4
[forward thing "Length right 90 wait 1]
end

He also states somewhere in his lessons:
"These lessons are not about learning MicroWorlds Logo, they are about 
learning how to program, and as a side effect you will also pick up some 
Logo."

The focus of the MicroWorlds cybercourse, I think, might be more like:
"MicroWorlds Logo can empower you to create your own computer "microworld" in 
which, for instance, animated characters can interact with each other, or in 
which you develop your own computer games or your own geometrical designs. 
While you are learning how to make the most of MicroWorlds, you will also be 
learning some things about how to program with the Logo language."

2) He does not seem to have updated the site in quite a long time. For 
instance, he reports that there is no MicroWorlds plug-in for Macintosh 
computers. Please!!! It has been available for several years, I think. 
There is a 1998 copyright date on the pages where I happened to notice it.

3) He makes very little mention of any features special to MicroWorlds. He 
might as well be writing most of the lessons for any version of Logo. There 
are indeed a couple of exceptions (animating an animal by alternating shapes, 
and programming a color).

4) The lessons run out very quickly before we get to much sophistication or 
fun.

5) While his explanations are very thorough, I doubt that many young 
programmers would slog their way through them. While sometimes his writing 
is to the point and lively, sometimes it is strikes me as unnecessarily 
wordy. There are few visuals and there is no interactivity on the lesson 
pages themselves; the interactive projects are all tucked away in a project 
gallery, even when they are the outcome of a lesson. He does not provide a 
link to the relevant project from its lesson or even indicate on the lesson 
page that there IS an accompanying interactive project elsewhere at the site. 


6) He does not always know the MicroWorlds environment as thoroughly as one 
would hope. For instance, on the Page 11 lesson, he says at one point: "In 
MicroWorlds, the most recently hatched turtle goes in front of any other 
turtles. Also the turtles are automatically named t1, t2 and so on. In our 
case, this is not the order we want. The only way I know of changing this is 
to just accept it and change turtles. In other words, we will make our dog t2 
and our pond t1." 
Well, in fact, it is an easy matter to place one turtle in the foreground 
of another without switching their shapes; you simply SHIFT-click on one to 
place it in the foreground in front of all the others. If you have oodles of 
turtles, you just SHIFT-click on them in order, clicking the ones you want 
more in the background first and ending with the ones you want in the 
foreground.

But having said all that, I did learn some things about programming style 
from his pages, and I liked (for instance) the lesson in which he purposely 
creates an error and and then works the reader through how to debug the 
program. I'm well aware that I may be overly critical of his site. I think 
his site is worth visiting for those of us contemplating how to proceed with 
a cybercourse. I would be very interested if some of you would share your 
reactions. It would be especially helpful to ask a few younger people to 
work their way through his lessons and share their impressions. We need to 
get a sense of how much text people are willing to read online, and how 
comfortable or uncomfortable they might be with toggling between the online 
lessons and the projects they are developing on their own computer.

Wendy