Eurologo 2001 A Turtle Odyssey

21-25 August 2001, Linz, Austria

Oh my, what have you missed!!!

After Dublin(1987), Gent (1989), Parma (1991), Anavissos (1993), Birmingham (1995), Budapest (1997), Sofia (1999), now Linz got the chance of organising the 8^th European Logo conference to show the newest developments, results, and hold discussions related to learning using Logo or Logo-related systems. “A Turtle Odyssey” being more than an accidental pun, intending to open the mind to think about new and never used ways – the creative way of learning.

The conference consisted of different types of sessions: tutorials, keynote lectures, plenary lectures, discussions, paper presentations and demonstrations.

The first day was a busy day of 2x3 half day tutorials. They were very popular and difficult to choose from:

Uri Wilensky, showed us how to command thousands of Turtles using NetLogo for modelling.

Brian Harvey, as always, could show more and more advanced Logo aspects, which deserve further respect for him.

Zsuzsa Pluhar, showed the educational benefits of learning with Lego-Logo.

Ken Kahn, let us take a trip with Marty in ToonTalk.

Ivan Kalas, Andrej Blaho, Lubomir Salanci, Monika and Peter Tomcsanyi, again bewildered us and deserve admiration for their very new product: Imagine, which was exploited here.

Marta Turcsanyi-Szabo, showed some features of her microworlds, which were said to be inspiring.

A Welcome Cocktail in the evening gave a chance for all to exchange the experiences of the day and greetings from the organisers with local drinks and food.

The second day brought heavy rain with bright ideas, starting out by a rare chance of illustrating different implementations:

Ken Kahn as invited keynote, provoked the community by explaining why ToonTalk could be a colleague, competitor, successor, sibling or child of Logo with reasons for it being easily mastered, more appropriate for a wider age range, and providing better support tools for making games, simulations, and remote collaboration.

Andrej Blaho and Ivan Kalas got their chance as the next plenary presentation to show how object metaphor helps create simple Logo projects in Imagine, bewildering the audience with concepts that could be used and understood by toddlers and at the same time still provide enhanced object oriented environment for professional developers.

Lubomir Salanci went on by showing the networking features of Imagine through object teleporting, distributed computing, data collection and games.

Chronis Kynigos, continued to show some other kind of networks with E-slate, that allows to connect a variety of software components (Java beans) to define or change connectivity between and functionalities within these in order to create a coherent piece of educational microworld.

The plenary sessions were followed by parallel sessions in the afternoon, which provided presentations and discussions of themes: Classroom experiences – primary education, Robots and Lego-Logo, Classroom experiences – secondary education, Special needs and philosophy, with contributions from: Alexandra Yudina, Anthony Jones, Chronis Kynigos, Erich Neuwirth, Ildiko Tasnadi, Irina Kouznetsova, Ivalio Ivanov, Karl Fuchs, Karoly Farkas, Michael O Duill, Monika Tomcsanyiova, Wlodzimierz Gajda. After which the conference reception dinner took place in a nearby restaurant with greetings from the mayor of Linz and the city council, providing flavours of local specialities crowned by magnificent dessert compositions and drinks till late night.

The third day started out by the discussing the weather and the dark and bright side of ICT:

Brian Harvey as invited keynote, provoked the audience by some statements found in the report from the Alliance for Childhood, illuminated Logo related sections with some discussion on how Logo could be exception to attacks (e.g. mechanical thinking, lack of essential human touch, …etc.), yet pinpointed some aspects that are worth to think over.

Evgenia Sendova got a great applause for giving us a part of herself as artist and analyst of painting and music, searching the balance between rigid rules and random choice, variation of theme, and some pedagogical aspects of the modelling of creative processes.

The seeds of contradictory ideas emerging form the two presentations, plus the added introductory talks of Brian Harvey, Evgenia Sendova, Ken Kahn, and Paul Nicholson initiated a thoughtful discussion that was blended by Erich Neuwirth.

The afternoon sunshine (arranged by the local organisers!) allowed a pleasant trip to the monastery of Kremsmuenster, where our guides revealed the treasures and history of the institution in operation till today with a school of about 300 students. We got a chance to feed the fish in the picturesque pond of the monastery and were properly fed at the internal restaurant ourselves, although we tried our best to confuse service with our vegetarian and non-vegetarian requests for dinner.

The fourth day blended into teacher education, teaching methods and didactics:

Paul Nicholson, as invited keynote, was looking for evidence of emerging pedagogical content knowledge related to classroom teaching of gravity in the senior secondary school curriculum and explained how the Turtles of Logo can play the significant role in exploring conceptual difficulties.

Uri Wilensky, brought out some more Turtles, in fact several thousands, to convey the micro-level and macro-level patterns of emerging phenomena by constructing models of natural and social systems using NetLogo, the multi-agent modelling language.

Marta Turcsanyi-Szabo showed why S.O.M.E. Logo environments are suitable for broader educational purposes including self-expression and new forms of exploratory art.

Then again together with Erich Neuwirth and Zsuzsa Pluhar illustrated how the boundaries of teacher education can be extended, by illustrating their common activities in the Co-didactics project.

The plenary sessions were followed by parallel sessions in the afternoon, which provided presentations and discussions of themes: Logo implementations and Logo programming, Demonstrations, Methodology and curriculum design, Environments for learning and teacher education, with contributions from: Ana Isabel Sacristan, Erich Neuwirth, Ivalio Ivanov, Marta Koros-Mikis, Matjaz Zaversnik, Michael Moro, Peter Tomcsanyi, Sietse Kuipers, Tiago Correia, Valentina Dagiene, Vesela Ilieva, Vladimir Batagelj. After which the official closing ceremony indicated how fast time has been flying and although this conference has ended, remaining thoughts should be transferred to Porto for continuation in 2003.

The evening ended with a farewell party at a countryside inn with enough food for even the next conference! J Reflections of moments and thoughts appeared and re-appeared between bites and drinks with ambitious plans for the future. All were keen to learn the results of the Best Presentation award, which you can Imagine was a very tight competition from other topics on Imagine, and was awarded to Tiago Correia for injecting his charming youth into his charming “Pathways” presentation.

Everyone looked happy, content, relaxed and thankful to the local organisers: Anton Knierzinger, who has also provided the facilities in his academy as venue for the conference; Erich Neuwirth, who has also contributed to our entertainment with scientific presentations as well as social presentations to make sure that we laugh enough; Gerald Futschek, who also proved that there are no problems that cannot be solved and gave the impression that there were actually no problems at all; while we knew that we have really confronted Elisabeth Degenhart with all our needs, who practically seemed to be always there for us.

We here would like to say “Thank you!” again for all we got from Eurologo 2001 Turtle Odyssey.

Well, don’t feel too depressed for missing the chance. You can still get a taste of the happenings through the proceedings. No doubt, this is the most beautiful printed proceedings in the history of Eurologo, with appealing design and coloured print published by the Austrian Computer Society. There are still some copies left for you that you can order through: eurologo2001@sunsite.univie.ac.at

First come first served!

You’d better watch out for the next conference in Porto, Portugal, 2003 not to miss your next chance! For more information and constant upgrades of the Eurologo community, make sure to bookmark the Eurologo official Web site: www.eurologo.org

↑____   Marta Turcsanyi-Szabo   ∩   Jenny Sendova   ˉˉˉˉˉˉ↓

A Turtle Odyssey Poem

Problems hot in education
in a computer situation
using Logo as a tool
for any self-respected school
were in fact an Odyssey
of turtles that we came to see
from near East and far West
SETHEADING TOWARDS the best
EUROLOGO new edition -
a nice and noble competition…
The languages mostly spoken
were Austrian, English (slightly broken)
but still such live communication
brings up the highest inspiration!
Gerald made a nice review
on Eurologos old an new
and Toni told a funny joke
which a laughter great provoked.
For Logo use an its potential
workshops proved to be essential -
nice examples and new trends
demonstrated by old friends
were very tempting and so great
as to make us hesitate
(what a choice hard we’ve made)
where to participate:
turtles, games, a simulation
or remote collaboration.
Ken Kahn suggested that ToonTalk
surpasses Logo and Small Talk
but finally he did admit
that it is just a good tool kit.
Then Andrej, Ivan did create
Imagine objects, really great
and Julian - a modest client
was served by Lubo - just a giant!
Chronis showed the recent state
of Java components, E-slate
then parallel nice presentations
provoked a real admiration:
Lego, Logo and robotics
were well defended topics
by Irina, Sonya, Gaida…
Erich was not silent either
combining spreadsheets and Imagine
thus constructing traffic engine…
Understanding evolution
was new Michael’s contribution
and Brian brought a new report
to be discussed by our board.
Teachers training as a key
issue every one could see
when Paul Nicholson presented
the gravity experimented.
Boundaries well extending
with potential never ending
Austria & Hungary showed solutions
for two important institutions.
Uri showed multi-agents
acting as new pattern legends
and not a single moving scene
from Logo classes we have seen...
Logo implementations
and creative demonstrations
attracted many Logo fans
admiring various micro-lands
The conference organization
deserves the highest estimation
and Marta passed the torch in hands
reliable. When in lands
Portuguese we meet again
We’ll be proud not in vain!
Eurologo’s new edition
will bring again informaticians
together, using ICT
and the Programming Committee
will enjoy the Logo game
with a motto just the same:

FORWARD, BACKWARD, LEFT OR RIGHT

WE ARE GETTING DEEP INSIGHT;

FASTER, HIGHER, FURTHER, WISER

- FRIENDSHIP IS THE BEST ADVISER!