LOGO-L> Some notes about Logo in Russia

["Olga Tuzova" <olgatu@ort.spb.ru>]

Dear friends,

I'm glad to return to our wonderful club after my very long summer 
vacation.
Some time ago I was asked by Gary Stager to write an article for Logo 
Exchange. I'm not sure that what I've written will suite Gary's 
Journal, but in any case I'd like to show my "essay" to you, may be 
something there would be interesting for you . If you wish, I could 
help you to connect with the persons mentioned in the article and, 
of course give you more detailed information on every paragraph of 
it.

Also, I invite you to visit the draft of my new web-site. Sorry, it's 
just a draft, but it might be some sort of illustration to the 
article. 

All the best,
Olga. 
---------------------------------

"Round Table Discussion"

Olga A. Tuzova, Ph.D.
International School Of General Education, St.Petersburg, Russia.
e-mail - olgatu@ort.spb.ru
http://www.ort.spb.ru/temp/page_tu/my_main.htm

I was asked to write some lines 
about Logo in Russia and, in particular, in St.Petersburg. Being just 
a school teacher, I think, it would be presumptuous of me to make any 
sort of summation, for in Russia there are many interesting and 
gifted teachers working differently, moving their own ways. Each of 
them have many things to tell us. Just the list of their ideas would 
make up the whole article. In that list one could find, for example, 
projects with the mixed media, including such components as Logo, 
Lego-Logo, Theatre, Psychology, Ecology, Landscape design and Video 
(Evgeny Patarakin, http://dll.botik.ru/~pat) and creation of animated 
GIFs, based on Logo-drawings (Olga Tuzova). Or, solving serious 
logical puzzles using logical variables and operations, and 
introduction to Dynamical Programming (Sofia Gorlitskaya). Or
solving linguistic problems (Irina Kuznetsova) and 
beautiful graphical projects  -- Logo-ballet "Swan Lake" (Tatyana 
Gurina), "A Walk With Pushkin Along The Nevsky Prospect" (Irina 
Dribinskaya). Or, making multi-media Math and Science text-books 
(Galina Touzova) and creation and exploitation of Logo-Databases 
(Alexandra Yudina). On the other hand, Russian educators only 
recently have discovered Logo environments as a powerful tool for 
discovery and constructive learning and a vehicle of self expression. 
So, I decided to invite you to the  imaginary Round Table discussion, 
where participants are limited in time and, here on the paper, -- in 
place, and give you just a glimpse into what is happening in most of 
the St.Peterburg's schools which are using Logo. Welcome to our Round 
Table!


Organizer: 
Dear colleagues, the goal of our meeting is to share the
experiences we've had in teaching Logo. Since the Computer Science 
and Information Technology entered our classrooms we have been 
offered a great variety of software, developed especially for school 
teaching, including software for learning about computer programming.
Why do we choose to use Logo? What goals do we pursue? Have we come 
up to expectations? What problems have we encountered in our practice 
and how do we overcome them? I'd like these questions to be the stem 
of our discussion.
Who would like to get us started with their comments?

First teacher: 
As it is in many schools, I begin to teach Logo in the
5th grade and my choice is Logo Writer. First of all, being a 
programming language, Logo develops such important human experiences 
as analysis and synthesis, planning and experimentation, composing of 
the algorithm and it's description in a formal language. Besides, the 
process of debugging fosters confidence in students. They learn to 
not fear making mistakes, just to bravely find and revise them, and 
this is crucial to their growth. Most importantly, the LogoWriter 
environment conceptually is very clear, children feel comfortable 
there and although commands both for turtle and for cursor are very 
simple and few, serious and really creative 
projects can be done using this software.
Secondly, I use Logo as a special tool which helps kids in their 
cognitive activity. The simple fact that they can not only look at 
something, hear or read about something, but reproduce this, make a 
model of the object or event on their own, is most effective. Thus, 
working on the project, devoted to St.Petersburg's crude iron fences, 
children inevitably are being involved in their own investigation of  
rythm and repetition in ornaments, symmetry and propotion. What is most
important, these investigations are not forced on them by a teacher, but
inspired by their desire to make their own model, to make it beautiful.

Second teacher.
Supporting this point of view, I'd like to add also that these 
activities would be more effective if specialists in different 
knowledge domains were involved.Therefore I work in close contact 
with the Math teacher and we have developed a special collaborative
curriculum,  which helps children greatly in their efforts to master
many geometrical concepts, such as angles, different kinds of 
polygons,  coordinates, circles and so on. Before my students learn 
to write programs on their own, I introduce them to these concepts 
via games, which have been developed by my senior students who also 
use the Logo environment. 
For example, let's take the game "Target". In this game, the child 
has to estimate the direction (angle) and the distance from his 
turtle, which is placed randomly on the screen, to the target and 
send the turtle directly into the center of it. Or, I'm sure a child 
will have less problems with the coordinates after he learns to play 
the game where he has to convert ten monsters (that is, ten turtles 
wearing masks of monsters) into ten beauties after correctly pointing 
to the screen coordinates of each turtle. We also make special 
investigations about the properties of circles and polygons, 
about the number "pi"...

Third teacher(Grumbler):
I think you are very lucky to have an
opportunity to establish good contacts with your colleague. Classes
where I work,  as most of yours, are divided into two parts for
Computer Science lessons and these two parts have their lessons
simultaneously in two different computer labs ruled by two different
teachers. Let alone Math teacher, I can't find common language with
my closest colleague!

Organizer: 
It's surely not a typical situation! Though, I should
confess, we intended many teachers of different specialities would
use the Logo environment for their purposes, that children would do 
special projects for Math and Science, Biology and Russian... But 
unfortunately it hasn't happened and it couldn't have happened 
without special mechanisms involving teachers in using new 
technologies.  I think we all feel this "effect of scissors" -- the 
more a teacher is experienced in his subject, the less he wants to 
change something in his practice. And it's a real problem. 

Fourth teacher.
I'd like to comment on the division of a class 
into two parts for Computer Science lessons. I'm sure more or less 
serious computer programming needn't be forced on kids who are not 
interested in it and the fact is, in conventional class there are 
many of them. The division of the class helps a 
student to find his place according to his own interests as we have 
different curriculum for these two groups of students. For one group 
we offer a special course of advanced programming based on 
MSW Logo. And the other course is offered to those, 
whose brains "are made differently". I've got very good results with 
this part as students work in LogoMiry, the Russian version of 
MicroWorlds. The students effectively use the multi-media 
opportunity of this environment making wonderful animated comics, 
multi-paged magazines, TV news or simple games with button control. 
It's a real joy to see how some of them who (have been) more used to 
failures in learning 
now come to light in this work.

Grumbler:
But this work with built-in painting program and just shapes 
changing has nothing to do with Logo or at least with real programming!
And I 
have no answer for a student who can't understand why he should write 
something like REPEAT 4[FD 100 RT 90] instead of taking an appropriate 
tool in a menu of painting program and just drawing the square, 
which is much more understandable for him.

Fifth teacher: 
The choice of Logo environment depends on the purposes
you pursue and on the abilities and age of the students. And the
effectiveness of the work is defined in a major part by the
teacher's skill in formulating tasks and how students are directed
and encouraged, isn't it? In our school we try to introduce
students to as many possibilities, as possible and we work with
LogoMiry, MSW Logo and Lego Dacta Control Lab as well. At the end of
the school year students have to perform a project on their own in
any of these environments. The project may be individual, but it
also may be done by a group of students, which is preferable.
Students are offered the list of about 20 themes, followed by some
explanation as to what is expected as a result of each project, but
children are free to develop their own proposals and to coordinate
them with the teacher. They are encouraged to use Internet resources
and different modern technologies and tools during their work and
for project presentation, such as  HTML-editors, PowerPoint and text
processor Word from MSW Microsoft Office, Adobe PhotoShop for
processing images after scanning, and others. In two months of
intense work a great school presentation of Lego-Logo projects takes
place and it's really worth seeing! There you can see computer
games, graphical and fractal patterns, education programs for
younger students, animated GIFs -- based on Logo patterns, computer
tests and quiz programs, computer controlled Lego models, and many
other very different things including WEB-pages. Every group of 
students present their works by themselves. The main part
of this is that you hardly could meet there a student who is not
proud of his work. Though, for teachers this kind of work with
students is of course is a most challenging one.

Organizer: 
Thank you all very much, though we have heard many interesting and 
useful things in our brief discussion, I'm sure we are putting not a
full stop here, but just a comma.


Acknowledgement.
The author wishes to thank Donald A. Paulson who made this article 
readable in English.

-------------------------------------------------

Olga Tuzova, Ph.D.
Computer Science teacher,
International School of General Education,
St.Petersburg, Russia,
E-mail olgatu@ort.spb.ru
URL http://www.ort.spb.ru/temp/page_tu/my_main.htm
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