ABSTRACT
Since the introduction of computers into British primary schools during the 1980s, one of the most powerful learning applications available to the teacher has been LOGO. Although essentially a programming language, to simply refer to it as such does not begin to do it justice. Developed by Seymour Papert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1970s, and discussed in depth in his classic book Mindstorms (1980), the philosophy underlying LOGO is to put the child in control of the computer rather than allowing the computer to control the child. As a result, LOGO represents one of the few genuinely ‘content-free’ applications so far developed for educational use, because the child ‘programs’ the computer to get a desired response or outcome by entering a series of commands. Although this has to be within the boundaries created by the limitations of the software itself, there is genuine potential for the computer to respond entirely to the wishes of the user.
