INTELLIGENT ANIMATED MODELLING SOFTWARE FOR SCHOOLS

LOGOTRON, THE UK's LEADING software publisher for schools, is announcing the release of the latest state-of-the-art educational software, TOONTALK - a self-teaching programming environment for children.

The concept of TOONTALK is completely new. Children work in an animated 3-D computer world to build a wide variety of models without realising that what they are actually doing is 'learning to program'. It has been carefully designed to support the modelling, measurement and control strands of the UK IT National Curriculum.

In ToonTalk, the child controls an animated character, building, testing and debugging a program or model. The ToonTalk world resembles a twentieth century city. ToonTalk houses are the building blocks of a program. Communication between houses (and their functions is accomplished by birds (like homing pigeons) which accept things, fly to their nest, leave them there, and fly back. ToonTalk houses contain animated robots that have been trained to complete small tasks. Other programming 'tools' include helicopters, lorries, houses, streets, bicycle pumps, toolboxes, hand-held vacuum cleaners and boxes! Wildlife is limited to birds and their nests.

Managing Director for Logotron Julian Pixton, states: "Many educationalists believe that a system that is easy enough for children to learn without the help of a skilled teacher, will have to be very limited. ToonTalk, however, is a largely self-teaching system that is flexible and expressive. It uses clever ‘intelligent tutoring strategies to help children learn about the Toontalk environment, and about powerful programming and problem solving techniques and ideas." He added, "We already provide schools with the most innovative software for the IT Capability part of the National Curriculum. The addition of ToonTalk to the Logotron range is a natural step forward."

The author of ToonTalk, Ken Kahn, who created this revolution in Virtual 3D modelling, previously worked for Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). To design ToonTalk, Ken has taken the original LOGO design philosophies and principles from 30 years ago and re-interpreted them using the latest thinking in visual, object orientated programming design to create a brand new environment specifically for children.

Ken Kahn commented, "My goals with ToonTalk were not only to move forward from Logo with respect to the underlying language and the user interface, but I also had the idea of making ToonTalk work in schools and homes even if the parents knew nothing about programming".

He continued, "I am very excited about the prospects for ToonTalk within British Schools. In fact with ToonTalk, the whole idea of Logo can be used very successfully by knowledgeable, skilled, and enthusiastic teachers."

ToonTalk programs can be saved as Java (Windows 95 version only) and displayed on world wide web pages using a Java enabled browser.

ToonTalk is available for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95/NT, priced £52.00 excl VAT and will be published in the UK exclusively from Logotron. It will be on general release in May 1998.

Visit the TOONTALK page

Please contact Denise Lyne by telephone on 01223 425558 Ext 725 or e-mail at dlyne@logo.com for PRE-LAUNCH PREVIEWS AND REVIEW COPIES

9th April 1998