Upward Bound Turtle Workshop – Summer 2023

The Upward Bound Turtle Workshop at the University of Rochester is a brief introduction to programming using text-based languages for students who have very little prior exposure to programming. The students are drawn from Rochester's Upward Bound STEM program. The workshop introduces students to Logo (specifically, to a customized version of JSLogo) and allows them to download their code to the Open Source Turtle Robot.

This website contains information about the workshop, the educational materials used, and links to the software and hardware used.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2144384. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Credits

The Open Source Turtle Robot was designed by Ken Olsen (aka MakersBox).

The workshop was designed by Sreepathi Pai, but could not have happened without the help and support of Danielle Daniels, the Director of Diversity in STEM at the Kearns Center and James Alkins, Shop Manager at the Rettner Hall for Media Arts and Innovation.

2023 Edition

The 2023 edition was the second edition of the workshop. It was a 70-minute introduction to Logo with an aim to get students to write programs with simple loops (REPEAT, and FOREVER). There were 10 high-school students who participated. Just like last year, students took the turtle robots home to continue their exploration.

Materials used in the Workshop

  1. Handouts for 2023 (PDF) providing a quick reference to the Logo language (source: OpenDocument Presentation).
  2. JSLogo2Py, the browser-based Logo environment that produces (CircuitPython) output which can run on the Turtle Robot.
  3. Custom OSTR Firmware, based on the original, but updated to support CircuitPython 8 and now containing a full-fledged Logo interpreter.

2022 Edition

The 2022 Edition was the first edition of the workshop and was split into two parts. Part I was a 90-minute introduction to soldering (led by Danielle), and Part II was a 90-minute introduction to Logo. We had 6 to 8 students across the two parts of the workshop. Students took the turtle robots home to continue their exploration.

We gratefully acknowledge Rongcui Dong, PhD student in Computer Science and Jerri-Ann Cadet, Assistant Director for Pre-College Programs, Kearns Center, for assistance in running the workshop and the Office of Minority Student Affairs (OMSA) for providing lab space.

There are photographs of the event, thanks to Adam Fenster of the University of Rochester.

Materials used in the Workshop

  1. Handouts (PDF) providing a quick reference to the Logo language (source: OpenDocument Presentation).
  2. JSLogo2Py, the browser-based Logo environment that produces (CircuitPython) output which can run on the Turtle Robot.
  3. Custom OSTR Firmware, based on the original, but updated to support CircuitPython 7 and containing a new runtime to interface with JSLogo.

If you're interested in how the turtle robots were manufactured and assembled, read my behind-the-scenes notes.

Beyond the Workshop

Some useful resources:

  1. Brian Harvey's Computer Science Logo Style (JSLogo is based on this Logo dialect)
  2. Jim Muller's The Great Logo Adventure: Discovering Logo on and Off the computer