B.H.S. to Host Robotics Competition for 9-14 Year-Olds
There’s an exciting robotics competition happening later this month. It involves fun learning where students pick up new skills that they can apply in other areas of their studies. Belize High School is hosting the contest and looking for a few more participants. Reporter Andrea Polanco tells us more.
Sophia Usher, Standard V Student, Belize Elementary School
“You know the length of the robot is three hundred and sixty and you have to time it for how far you want it to go and so you have times three sixty by three sixty by three sixty or however long you want.”
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Sophia Usher is a Standard Five Student at the Belize Elementary School. She is also a competitor in the FIRST Lego League – which is a robotics competition for young people.
Sophia Usher
Sophia Usher
“You need to check which way you want it to turn – left or right? Then you decide if you want to turn left you have to keep the right wheel on zero and the left wheel has to be able to turn and how far you want it to turn. Now let’s see this little programme that I have for you here. (robot)…see that?”
This board where Sophia is operating her robots is what’s used in the FIRST Lego League. It’s a part of a global robotics competition where lower level students apply skills to gain real-world problem-solving experiences. The theme for this year’s competition is called REPLAY. Godfrey Sosa is the I.T Director of the Belize High School.
Godfrey Sosa
Godfrey Sosa, I.T. Director, Belize High School
“When we look at the board there are fourteen missions that must be completed and there are several of them where you see a tyre – and the robot will have to go to the tyre and flip the tyre up – another way of being active. You see this first one here with the blue pull up – that is what they refer to as a pull up bar – so the robot will have to go and take the wheel on the ground and pull the wheel back simulating a person still keeping active doing a pull up.’’
Robotics help to build important soft skills from team work to problem solving skills. It teaches research and coding, while reinforcing science, technology, engineering and math concepts among students in a hands-on environment.
Sophia Usher
“What I really like about robotics is that it is out of classroom. You are learning in school but you are just not in the classroom. So you’re learning physics and math and you learn to like cope with it and everything like that. I feel like it is more like a team work kind of thing. I like working with my friends and stuff to help me accomplish something and when we win it’s like, “Yay we have accomplished good team work.”
Godfrey Sosa
“It is a good opportunity to get kids from an early age to become engaged in new areas, new fields and one of those up and coming fields is robotics. So, what we are trying to do here is to offer this as a way to inspire them in terms of thinking outside the box from traditional career paths.”
And now the BHS wants other students to join in on the fun, educational experience of playing and working with robots. For a second year, they are hosting a robotics competition for students ages nine to fourteen. BHS Principal Jamie Usher says there are still some open spaces.
Jamie Usher
Jamie Usher, Principal, Belize High School
“We are looking for a group of six that’s able to be mentored by a parent or a teacher so it doesn’t have to be directly from a school but we do have three more spots open where they can contact us about joining up and we will work out the safe logistics with you in order to get you to build and practice to working up to the end of the month. The core values of FIRST talk about discovery and impact, innovation but it also involves fun and team work and where a lot of students want to get back to school it is more for the social side and they miss their friends, they miss chatting with their teachers face to face and so this is a little demo way of where we can showcase the benefit of working together both in planning how to get our schools to open and how to get our kids to catch up.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
The robotics competition is set for March twenty-seventh.
