Robotics night draws ‘kids’ of all ages

Published 2:50 pm Monday, July 29, 2024

KLIPSAN BEACH — Robotics may be relatively new to classrooms, but children and adults of all ages took part and got hands-on experience programming and engineering their own robots last week.

Put on by Pacific STEM Robotics, the July 25 Big Kids’ Robotics Night at the Peninsula Senior Center served as an opportunity for students to become the teachers and adults to become the learners. More than 20 attendees learned the basics behind programming and automation, constructed and coded their own Lego Robot to move on its own, and faced off in soccer and sumo wrestling robotic competitions.

Pacific STEM Robotics was started by peninsula math, science and robotics teacher Donald Anderson, who serves as the club’s president. The club is supported by the Pacific Community Foundation and local donors.

Anderson has spent the past couple of years teaching overseas for the U.S. Department of Defense, but was back this summer to help put on STEM and robotics events, including summer camps for grades 3-12 that took place in June and July and was attended by 75 Ocean Beach School District students. Fifty of those attendees have been sponsored and their costs covered, and Anderson said the club is still trying to sponsor the remaining 25 students.

Those interested in sponsoring students who attended the summer camps can visit pacificstemrobotics.org to learn more.

The desire to hold an event for children and adults alike was shaped in part by Anderson’s own experiences growing up, saying he had no exposure to robotics when he was younger “and I understand why a part of our adult population would be curious and interested in our programs.”

“We live in an age where most parts of our life are affected by programming and automation,” he added. “An event like ours helps introduce the logic and process of how a program works to an audience who use apps and technology daily. It is a peek under the hood or behind-the-scenes for those who attended the event.”

Helping those in attendance were some of the summer camp attendees, giving them the chance to be the instructors and share their skills with others, which Anderson called “a higher form of learning.”

“Many of our camp attendees became mentors for their adults and in turn expressed a skill mastery above and beyond what they had accomplished during our summer camps,” he said. “Any positive opportunity to have students instruct is priceless for their growth in STEM learning.”

The evening also gave the club’s stakeholders a chance to interact and engage with the curriculum they’re supporting and see the student learning that takes place.

“For our sponsors, an event like this allows them to see how much of a difference their contribution is making to our students and community as a whole,” Anderson said. “The Big Kids’ Robotics Night did not provide very much sponsorship as we had originally intended, but it connected our organization to the community better than any of our other events this summer.”

The response was so positive that after two hours, which is how long the event was scheduled to last, every team asked to have another hour competing with their robots — which Anderson called “the best feedback” to get from a classroom.

“This event did more than we planned because of the positive and meaningful connections we saw happening between participants,” he added. “We had scrimmages and races between teams that were more fun than competitive. The exchanges we saw happen throughout the event were so heartwarming and likely will be a memory they carry with them throughout this coming school year.”