Posted by To experience the pleasure of intellectual creativity as children capture their imaginative ideas in computer code, The Turtle system provides an intuitively “natural” way to start programming where technical complications are kept to a minimum.
The Turtle System is a free educational program developed at the University of Oxford, designed to support the new Computer Science component of the National Curriculum and to bridge the “Post-Scratch Gap” between visual programming systems like Scratch and text-based programming. It is based on Turtle Graphics, an idea invented by Seymour Papert, in which an imaginary turtle moves around the computer screen drawing as it goes, all under the control of instructions given by a computer program.
The Turtle System supports several languages, all of which are compiled to portable code for a virtual Turtle Machine. The workings of the compilers and of the Turtle Machine are all open to inspection, providing many additional learning opportunities for advanced students. It is available as a traditional desktop app for Windows and as a progressive web app, which can be run directly in the browser.
The Oxford Turtle Project is funded by the UK Department for Education, with matched funding from various sources within the University of Oxford.
Computer programming can be tremendous fun, as well as educational. The best way to start learning to program is to have fun and the Turtle system helps a novice to create and explore creative ideas without the full knowledge of programming concepts and techniques.
Find more about The Turtle System.
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