Teacher Note: Body Syntonic

One of the things that Seymour Papert, the person who first used turtles in programming, most liked about the turtle is that students could test their programs using body syntonic reasoning. This means that a turtle moves in the way that a student moves. Students can go forward and turn right. A student can pretend to be the turtle, doing exactly what the program says. In this video, our “turtle” person, Barbara Ericson, doesn’t take 100 steps. Instead, she goes forward 3 steps since her steps are so much larger than a turtle’s.

Click on the right arrow below to play the following video.

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