Washington STEM Academy Kicks Off Robotics Project
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Fourth- and sixth-grade students at the Washington Elementary STEM Academy were excited Thursday to find out about the Lego® League robotics project they will be taking part in.
“It’s pretty cool,” said sixth-grader Cassie Ashenfelter.
“I think it will be very educational for the younger kids to get to know electronics better,” Gavin Plath, sixth-grader, said. “It teaches them the knowledge of an engineer so they know what to do with robotics.”
“I’m excited because I’ve never done this before and I want to try it,” said fourth-grader Antonio Garcia. “It’s good to be challenged at this age because you can be competitive, and smart and will learn a lot.”
“I think it’s very educational for when we grow up,” said Hannah Hutton, fourth grade.
Ben Barkey, Washington STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) coach, said every fourth- and sixth-grade student at Washington will take part in the robotics program that kicked off Thursday. There are 65 students in each grade level.
Next school year, fifth-grade students will be added.
Barkey said the new and great thing about tackling the robotics program at the STEM Academy is that a portion of it will involve writing, which will meet the state standards. Students will have to write about their robots and the difficulties in building and programming them.
“That’s going to be neat and exciting to develop those writing skills,” he said.
Thursday’s kickoff to the robotics project was to introduce students to it and all that it will entail. Students will present their robots to the public and compete with them like Edgewood Middle School has for the last five years.
Students will be able to get creative with their robots.
During the kickoff, “robotic” music was played. Students saw a slide show of robotics and were given the introduction to the project.
“The excitement level was really high,” said Barkey. “They were ready to get going. They have not experienced anything like this before.”
Barkey said Washington will have 24 robotics teams. Washington will have its own competition, with the best eight being chosen to move on to state qualifiers Nov. 18. State competition will be in December.
The goal, Barkey said, is to take more than eight teams to qualifiers in the future.
By starting students in the fourth grade, they will gain three years of robotics experience by the time they finish the sixth grade. They then can move on to robotics in middle school and high school.
The theme for the Lego® League robotics competition this year is “Senior Citizens.” Each robotics team at Washington will have to adopt a senior citizen, find a problem they face and figure out how to address that problem, Barkey said. Students will have to go out in the community to meet senior citizens and write about what they learn.
Ashenfelter said she’s never built a robot before, but expects it to be challenging. “Because you have difficulties with this one device to make it move and stuff. It seems difficult,” she said.
Plath said he’s tried to build a robot before but it didn’t work.
“I like coming up with the ideas for it and looking at the other ideas people have for it,” he continued.
Garcia said he couldn’t wait to start and do all the stuff they will get to do with the robotics, especially the competition.
Hutton, who said she’s played with robots before, likes robots that you can program.
“I really like programming them,” she said. “That’s the best part.”
“It’s an exciting time here at Washington STEM Academy,” said Principal Tom Ray. “Just knowing kids are involved, solving real life problems with real solutions.”
