Students served themselves ice cream, made tie-dye shirts, worked with electronic circuit boards and programmed robots during a week-long summer camp at Center Grove’s Innovation Center.
Red Alert Robotics, the Center Grove High School robotics team, hosted the camp from July 15 to Friday. The camp hosted 25 students from kindergarten through sixth grade, and each of the five days had a split focus between robotics and a different letter of the STEAM acronym: science, technology, engineering, art and math.
The acronym has traditionally been STEM, but the ‘a’ was added because of the role graphic design plays in technology, said Rachel Miller, head operations mentor for Red Alert Robotics.
“Especially today, graphic design is a huge part of designing things. We pride ourselves on robotics that work and look nice," Miller said.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Robotics has been a part of Center Grove schools since 2003, when the First Lego League robotics program began at the elementary and middle schools, she said.
During arts day, children painted tiles. During technology day, they connected miniature electronic circuit boards to play-doh pianos, and made simple electronic games with the boards. On math day, campers discussed math involving fractions with ice-cream, and how two quarter-cups of ice cream equaled one half-cup that they served themselves, said Chase Rivas, a Center Grove High School senior and executive captain of Red Alert Robotics.
During science day, children made flashlights with foam and LED bulbs, and tie-dye shirts experimenting with different pH (acidity) levels to learn how those various levels would affect the color. And on engineering day, they spent a full day with their robots, a work in progress, he said
Sarah Miller, 11, is heading into sixth grade and is home schooled. Her favorite part of the camp was arts day and programming robots, she said.
“I’ve made a lot of new friends and learned different things about STEAM,” Sarah Miller said.
Sawyer Swain, who will be entering fourth grade at Maple Grove Elementary School, enjoyed the tie-dye science experiments and ice cream the most. She wants to be on the robotics team in high school, she said.
“I like making stuff. You get to add one block of this little Lego piece and you can code it," said Swain, 9.
On school teams, students can compete in the state and world championships. Center Grove’s high school team finished in the top 16 during the world championship last year in Detroit, Rachel Miller said.
Rivas was part of that team.
“It was awesome to see teams from all over the world,” Rivas said. “There were Australian teams, teams from Japan and Asia, there was a French team next to us; it was awesome. There’s one language of engineering we all speak even though we speak different languages.”
Programming robots to accomplish certain tasks, like shooting a basketball, pulling a lever or stacking cubes in a competitive setting can be fun, but it also teaches students concepts of engineering and how to present their ideas in a professional setting, Miller said.
“The challenge is to design something to complete a challenge like a lot of engineers would do in the real world,” she said. “For our team, we want them to be well-rounded, in not just basic engineering but how to communicate designs. We have engineering design reviews.”
Center Grove, Greenwood, Clark-Pleasant and Indian Creek schools all have robotics teams.
