Abstract
Turtle graphics, first introduced in the Logo programming language in the late 1960s, have since been widely used in programming education. Turtle graphics is excellent for programming training, providing an intuitive platform for understanding the fundamental procedural programming principles, through its simple graphics functions allowing visual feedback for programming. This paper introduces a new and original application of turtle graphics to Java programming language, particularly targeted to early Java programming education. The aim of the proposed Java language turtle graphics library is (a) to use turtle graphics to provide intuitive understanding of fundamental procedural programming principles, (b) to provide an easy tool for the students to create visually interesting programs in the early stages of programming education, and (c) to stimulate the motivation of students to improve the learning effect of programming training and encourage further self-study. The proposed Java language turtle graphics library was introduced to 1st year college students with minimal Java language programming training, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Papert S (1980) Mindstorms: children, computers and powerful ideas. Basic Books, New York
Ephraim P. Glinert (eds) (1990) Visual programming environments: paradigms and systems. IEEE Computer Society Press, New York
Mackin KJ (2013) Non-event driven graphics API for programming education. In: MasanoriSugisaka M, Lee JJ, Tanaka H (eds) The eighteenth international symposium on artificial life and robotics 2013 (AROB 18th’13). International Society of Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, pp 118–121
Tisue S, Wilensky U (2004) Netlogo: a simple environment for modeling complexity. In: Minai A, Bar-Yam Y (eds) Proceedings of the fifth international conference on complex systems ICCS 2004. The New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, pp 16–21
diSessa AA, Abelson H (1981) Turtle geometry. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Caspersen ME, Christensen HB (2000) Here, there and everywhere- on the recurring use of turtle graphics in CS 1. In: Ellis AE (ed) Proceedings of the Australasian conference on computing education. ACM, New York, NY, pp 34–40
Brusilovsky P, Calabrese E, Hvorecky J, Kouchnirenko A, Miller P (1997) Mini-languages: a way to learn programming principles. Educ Inform Technol Springer 2(1):65–83
Roberts E, Picard A, Fredricsson M (1998) Designing a Java graphics library for CS 1. In: Proceedings of the 6th annual conference on the teaching of computing and the 3rd annual conference on Integrating technology into computer science education, pp 213–218
Verhoeff T (2010) 3D turtle geometry: artwork, theory, program equivalence and symmetry. Int J Arts Technol 3(2–3):288–319
Mackin KJ (2018) Basic Graphics http://www.edu.tuis.ac.jp/~mackin/basic/ (in Japanese). Accessed 9 Apr 2018
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
About this article
Cite this article
Mackin, K.J. Turtle graphics for early Java programming education. Artif Life Robotics 24, 345–351 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-019-00528-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-019-00528-y