News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers. Parent comment

Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by sdg1 on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @09:34PM (#10189187)
There's a somewhat relevant concept in Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms. Papert talks about "body-syntonicity" where the act of drawing a circle on the computer screen with LOGO can be seen as bridging children’s sense and knowledge about their own bodies to something abstract. Young children would often pretend to be the LOGO turtle, acting out commands on the floor, during stages of planning a LOGO program, or while debugging LOGO code. It has also been a strategy for teachers to introduce programming and procedural ways of thinking. This video shows this in action (with some followup comments from Papert): https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by rurounijones on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @11:25PM (#10189502)
When I was in school with the BBC micro and the LOGO turtle we had an actual physical turtle hooked up to the machine via a long cable.

Needless to say this was much more popular with us than just the screen. I am sure it is partly for the robotic'ness of it but we would often walk around with the turtle as it was moving. So what you are saying and linked to I can well believe.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by juanuys on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:00AM (#10190877)
This sounds great. Do you have any more information on the mechanical turtle? (consumer kit, or a side-project by an industrious teacher?)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by rurounijones on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:56AM (#10191100)
This was a consumer kit aimed at schools. Looks like there were many different types as obitoo has another that I have never seen.

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by 7Z7 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @11:19AM (#10191956)
Huh! Ours, and the ones I saw on telly as a nipper, did not look like an actual turtle! It was just a smooth hemisphere with gubbins on display, inside.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers by obitoo on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:19AM (#10190941)
Here he is , as i recall it was a kit http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/8bit_focus/logo/logo.html
[ Parent | on HN ]