Northside Elementary hosts DawgBots camp in June
It may be summer in Polk School District, but at Northside Elementary School exciting robotic learning is still taking place.
During the week of June 27-30, 25 students attended Northside’s first annual DawgBots camp.
Josh Bearden, who headed the camp with the help of Lawana Gurley, said that this “was a robotics camp that gave students the opportunity to explore STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning in a hands on way through the use of robotics.”
Students in third, fourth and fifth grade at Northside Elementary School attended this camp.
“The overall goal of this camp was to further the knowledge of coding in students, to show students robotics in action in the community and to help build a successful foundation for Northside Elementary School’s Dawgbots robotic program,” Bearden said.
Students had the opportunity to learn more about programming code, designing robotic programs, the engineer design process, and completing competition tasks.
Chris Wilson from GYSTC spent the week with students teaching coding through a robotic tool called Sphero. Wilson worked with students in small group breakout sessions helping students develop a robotic language, teaching programming and coding basics, and designing a competition course for Sphero.
Students also had numerous guest speakers throughout the week that spent time teaching students or demonstrating robotics concepts to students.
Corey Wilkes from Meggitt of Rockmart spoke with students about the engineer process design and how to program sensors on a lego EV3 robot. He also helped students design a small sensor challenge upon the completion of their learning about sensors.
Nick McBride and Cody Nichols from Miura of Rockmart also participated in the DawgBots camp. McBride and Nichols visited with the students and talked about robotics in the workplace.
McBride also spoke with students about Miura’s boilers and how they are used and made.
Jefferson Southern Corporation sent a representative to speak with students about robotic welding.
Students got to ask questions about how robots are used in their community and what opportunities are available to them in the future.
The highlight of the week was a field trip to HON. Clay Cooper gave students a personalized tour of HON and demonstrated to students how HON uses robots everyday in their business to complete tasks.
Cooper also worked with the engineering department to have them put together a presentation to the students about coding and engineer process design.
Students had the opportunity to ask questions about how robotics are used everyday in their community and what jobs are going to be available in the students future using robotics.
“This was the first time students at Northside have had an industry tour and each student was excited and very informed,” Bearden said.
Students spent the week working with Sphero, Lego EV3 robots, code. org and Lego WeDo robots.
Northside Elementary DawgBots program was sponsored by Dr. Katie Thomas and the Polk County College and Career Academy, HON, Georgia Power, Jefferson Southern Corporation, Miura, and Kimoto Tech.
Northside DawgBots coaches Bearden and Gurley both said they were very pleased with the results of the camp and are excited about planning the next Dawgbots camp.
To learn more about Northside DawgBots visit http://www.polk.k12. ga.us/olc/page.aspx?id=307354&s=462 or call Northside Elementary School at (770)