2015 IAL Summer Program: STEM Robotics

August 5th & 6th

Yesterday and today campers continued to work on their comic strips and graphic novels. They have a goal of 15 panels by August 12th! They are finally getting the hang of how to make their characters move, show dialogue, resize them, etc! They are doing a great job of creating a superhero saving their community!
During this session we have teams combining missions with their robots. It's nice to see them challenging themselves. I can't wait to see them start their trial runs next week!
Yesterday we challenged the kids to a Red Solo Cup Competition. They had so much fun that they are asking to do it again. Maybe we will show you how it's done on our Competition Day! Today during our activity time they started making water bottle rockets. Tuesday will be our day to shoot them into the air!
Also today we had to say "good-bye" to two of our mentors, Brian and Taryn. They are needed at another robotics camp. We will miss them tremendously. They have been a huge asset to our camp. So here's a huge "THANK YOU!" to both of you for all of your help these past 5 weeks!

Brian helping Issac with his program.

Taryn helping Dylan with his robot.

August 4th, 2015

Nineteen enthusiastic campers greeted us this morning with bright smiles and an eagerness to get started! Since they now know all the rules and expectations of camp they were able to dig right in and get to work! By the end of our day, several campers were pleasantly surprised on how much they accomplished on their robots and missions. We even had time for a snack while we shared our high and lows of the day!

Collaboration

Team Work

Beach Ball Activity

August 3rd, 2015 (Day 1)
Today we welcomed 19 new STEM campers to Session 3 of Superhero STEM Robotics Camp! Students formed their teams, chose their jobs, created Pixton characters and participated in team building activities.

Please follow the progress of these 6 teams as they prepare for their competition next Thursday, links to each team's blogspot can be found to the right.

Welcome to camp Skyscrapers, Mechanical Maniacs, MoonHowlerz, Rockets, TFBT and JET.

July 23rd, 2015 (Day 4)
Teams were hard at work today completing missions and learning about the Spaghetti Bridge Challenge. Be sure to visit the team blogs on the right to read more!

July 22nd, 2015 (Day 3)
Day three activities included Graphic Novels on Pixton, an Egg Drop Challenge, many completed superhero mission and more! Be sure to visit the team blogs on the right to see camp from a student perspective!

July 21st, 2015 (Day 2)
Day two activities included Graphic Novel outlines, Pixton, Robotics, Snack Bag Assembly Line, and the introduction of The Unstoppables. Welcome to Superhero Robotics Sam and Tyler.

Be sure to visit the team blogs on the right to see camp from a student perspective!

The Unstoppables!

July 20th, 2015 (Day 1)
Welcome to STEM Robotics Session 2! We have four new teams competing:
The Avengers
The Terminators
The Supergirlz
The Shamrocks

Links to each team's blogspot can be found to the right. Today students formed teams, developed their blogspots, began building robots, started creating Pixton characters, discussed "What Makes a Hero?" and completed team building challenges!

Pictures

Supergirlz

The Shamrocks

The Terminators

The Avengers

July 15th, 2015 (Day 7)
Families and friends are invited to join us tomorrow for the STEM Robotics & Sports Literacy Programs Summer Celebrations!

STEM Robotics: 11:30am-1pm in the Middle School Library
Sports Literacy: 8:30am-1pm Middle School LGI Room

Please park and enter at Door 13

The summer programming has available spots open in Sports and Literacy (July 20th to 30th), STEM Robotics (August 3-13th), and Drama/Show Choir (July 20-Aug. 3).

If interested in attending a session, email dchapman@srk12.org or call 518-358-6650.

Today's activities included Trial Runs, Pixton Comic Book Creator Final Drafts, Lego Digital Design photos, a game of "Bird on a Perch" (Hit the Deck!), and the creation of Assembly Line snack bags!

Looking forward to seeing many parents and families tomorrow!

July 14th, 2015 (Day 6)
Wow! This summer is sure flying by for our STEM Robotics Camp students! Today students enjoyed rocket launches, trial robotics runs and Pixton Comics!

July 13th, 2015 (Day 5)

Students continue to be as enthusiastic about camp as they were the first day! They are beginning to feel a little pressure over completing their robot missions within the 2 minutes allotted but they are digging in and working hard! Below you can find a few pictures where they were completing some timed trials to see if their robot was going to be able to finish all the missions on time.

They also enjoyed working on their comic strip using Pixton.com. They are getting quite creative with their scripts and hopefully they will be able to finish up by Thursday. We even had a few students go home and play around with the program!

For our STEM activity the campers designed and created water bottle rockets. They used a 2 liter bottle, construction paper, tape, and scissors. Tomorrow we will launch them to see how far they go.

July 9th, 2015 (Day 4)

Wow! What a busy first week at Robotics STEM camp! Students worked in their groups to develop a poster for their comic book. These posters were then displayed for the students to present in a "Gallery Walk" to gain feedback on their ideas. These "I Like" and "I Wonder" statements will be used to help the students improve their comic books.

The afternoon was spent working on robotics and participating in team building games with Mrs. Mannix. We hope everyone has an amazing weekend and we look forward to seeing everyone on Monday!

July 8th, 2015 (Day 3)

Today students started their day with continued robotics missions. Some groups have completed additional missions and every group has now started their Lego Digital Designer project.

After Robotics time, students continued working with their Clarkson University mentors to practice using Pixton (a program we will use to design their Robotics Comics soon!)....Here are a few works in progress that we just had to share!

July 7th, 2015

Day 2 of Robotics Camp was definitely busy! Students learned about the parts of a comic book, discussed a main character for their comics and developed a working title for their comic book.

During robotics time, students were off and running planning missions. All groups chose team names and completed their base bots today.

Every group finished their first mission (Hulk mission) and many began working on programming their second mission. Builders have been busy making modifications to the robots while the Digital Designers are working with the Lego Digital Design program to create a model of the working robot. Programmers have been busy learning to program the "bricks" and have learned to use motors to make the robot run.