This summer you might have an eight to fifteen year old at home. This young child might want to stay in their room all day and play with their playstation, xbox360, or Wii. What do you want them to do? Use the iPad to learn programming of course!

LOGO by Emmanuel CROMBEZ is the app for you. It will introduce your child to the fun and challenging world of computer programming. Even if your child may have no interest in computers or programming, the math and logic involved are great teaching tools.

LOGO is a programming language that was developed in 1967, according to Crombez. It is not a language to write an application per se, but rather to teach logic and program design and fundamentals. You can tell (or ask as Crombez puts it) the turtle to move across the screen to make various shapes and designs.

I used this same language in linux with my ten year old when she was about six. It was fun to see the turtle move across the screen and command it to draw. Thinking about what to have the turtle do next is like telling a story where you have to be really careful not to miss a part. This is a great learning exercise for kids and adults!

Right now LOGO by Emmanuel CROMBEZ is in French, but Emmanuel sent over the documentation he was translating to English and I was able to update a few pieces. Hopefully this means and English version will be posted soon. When it is I will make an update to this post, but we used the French version and although the commands are sometimes in French, they are computer commands so really they could be in any language that is legible (Chinese writing is not really something I can “read” or even “recognize” easily for instance).

Fun – 4 It is fun to see the turtle do silly things
Learning – 5
Attention – 4 It really depends on the child, but parent involvement is necessary at first.
Total – 13

Check out me and my ten year old playing with the French version of the app: