Children's Mathematical Reasoning With the Turtle Programming Metaphor

Abstract

The original developers of Logo envisioned this programming language to serve as a conceptual framework for learning mathematics (Feurzeig & Lukas, 1971). The first versions of Logo were limited to text printed on teletype machines. Soon thereafter, Seymour Papert created the idea of directing a robot "turtle" with Logo commands such as "forward 50" and "right 90" (rotate 900 to the right) to create shapes and pictures. Directing the turtle in this way, students are learning mathematics by talking and exploring "Mathland" as one might learn Spanish by living in Spain (Papert, 1980). This chapter addresses this basic metaphor: "Talking to the turtle" (programming the Logo turtle) as "doing mathematics."