Sandra Wills played an instrumental role in the development of educational computing in Tasmania and Australia through the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, Wills emerged as one of Australia's leading experts in Logo, the world's first computer programming language designed for learning created by educationalists and computer scientists associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Wills was instrumental in introducing Logo into Australian schools. From the mid-to-late 1970s she ran Logo workshops with Tasmanian primary school students using the very first version of the software imported from MIT by her manager at the Tasmanian Education Department Computer Centre, Scott Brownell. Wills also directly aided in the diffusion of the software to other Australian states and territories and inspired and helped inform the uptake of Logo in classrooms across the country through a range of activities. These activities included delivering a keynote address at Australia's first National Computer Education Conference in 1979 that provided many teachers their first experience of Logo, and penning a regular column, 'Turtle Talk', for COM-3, the leading applied educational computing journal in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s.

An early feature of the Logo software was its ability to be programmed to command/drive a wheeled robot 'Turtle' connected to a computer (or computer interface). In the Logo workshops Wills ran in Tasmanian primary schools she initially used a Turtle produced by the American company General Turtle Co. In the late 1970s, she played a key role in developing the Australian-made Tasman Turtle in collaboration with computer scientist Richard Miller from the University of Wollongong and local Tasmanian engineer Allan Branch.

Wills continued her work as a pioneer in educational technology and educational innovation for over four decades, building a strong international reputation for her expertise in distance education and e-learning. From the mid-1990s until her retirement in 2018, Wills held senior roles in Learning and Teaching at two Australian universities - the University of Wollongong and Charles Sturt University.


References

Jones, A.J., McDougall, A., & Murnane, J.S. (2004). What did we think we were doing? Reflections on the History of Educational Computing in Victoria, Australia. History of Computing in Education.

Johnstone, B (2003). Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning, iUniverse, Lincoln.

McDougall, A., Murnane, J.S., and Wills, S. (2014). The educational programming language LOGO: its nature and its use in Australia. In Tatnall, A., and Davey, B. (Eds.). Reflections on the History of Computers in Education: Early Use of Computers and Teaching about Computing in Schools. Springer-Verlag, pp.394-407.

Nichols, M and Nev Ellington, N (2019). 'Professor Sandra Wills', Episode 26 of Leaders & Legends of Online Learning Podcast.

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