And They Were Thinking? Basic, Logo, Personality and Pedagogy - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 121

Therefore Brown and Rubinstein, above, present a neat summation of the teacher's
dilemma. Basic has proven to be easy to learn and get along with, but is not as likely
to foster new ways of thinking and expression as Logo. This is Weyer and Cannara's
point about “learning programming in full generality” [8 p3]. Does introducing stu-
dents to Basic actually prevent, or mitigate against, as Brown and Rubinstein suggest,
the development of a full set of programming tools? Logo's exponents insist it can do
this, but it seems to be at the expense of leaving many students cold. Logo's advo-
cates have not demonstrated the gains exposure to these ideas are supposed to bring.
That said, given the enormous number of contributing factors, research demonstrating
this is inherently extremely difficult, and the advocates of Basic have not done much
better.
Essentially the teacher of today is in no better position than the pioneers, and is es-
sentially dependent on their own belief in the promise that having students write pro-
grams will bring educational and other advantages. And because I am passionately in
this school myself, I would be perfectly happy to do so in Logo or in Basic because I
see the same promise in both, (though since I value simplicity, I would have a hanker-
ing after LogoWriter rather than the over-elaborated MicroWorlds). The pioneers of
educational computing knew that programming a computer had educational benefits
and set out to prove it, but I don't think the World listened.
References
1. Feurzeig, W., Papert, S., Bollm, M., Grant, R., Solomon, C.: Programming-Languages as a
Conceptual Framework for Teaching Mathematics. Final report of the first fifteen months
of the Logo project. Washington, D.C., Bolt, Beranek and Newman. R-1889, 329 p.
(1969), ERIC ED 007 932
2. Ham, V.: Technology as Trojan horse. In: McDougall, A., Murnane, J.S., Jones, A., Rey-
nolds, N. (eds.) Researching IT in Education Theory, Practice and Directions, pp. 25-38.
Routledge, London (2010)
3. Kemeny, J., Kurtz, T.: The Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, 76 p. National Science
Foundation, Washington (1967)
4. Cubin, L.: Oversold and underused: computers in the classroom. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge (2001)
5. Cox, M.: The changing nature of researching IT in education. In: McDougall, A.,
Murnane, J.S., Jones, A., Reynolds, N. (eds.) Researching IT in Education Theory, Prac-
tice and Directions, pp. 11-24. Routledge, London (2010)
6. Munro, R.K.: Setting a new course for research on information technology in education.
In: McDougall, A., Murnane, J.S., Jones, A., Reynolds, N. (eds.) Researching IT in Educa-
tion Theory, Practice and Directions, pp. 46-53. Routledge, London (2010)
7. Ershov, A.P.: Programming: the second literacy. In: Lewis, R., Tagg, D. (eds.) Computers
in Education, vol. 1, pp. 1-8. North-Holland, Amsterdam (1981)
8. Weyer, S.A., Cannara, A.B.: Children learning computer programming: experiences with
languages, curricula and programming devices. Stanford, Calf., Stanford University, 228 p.
Technical Report No. 250 (1975), ERIC ED 111 347
9. Kurtz, T.: Basic. In: Wexelblat, R.L. (ed.) History of Programming Languages. Academic
Press, New York (1981)