Posted on by Mags

Bridges to build and DNA to observe!

It was another exciting day in the life of a STEM and robotics camper! The sea of green and blue shirts were an awesome sight and generated some great buzz amongst the faculty and staff on campus! The students are doing a great job using their manners and were great listeners today.

Vex Robotics

The groups finished building the Clawbots today and dove into learning to code on RobotC. Some have had a little bit of experience on RobotC, but most have not. RobotC is different than most of the students’ prior computer programming experience, so it takes a little bit to get the hang of it. They will dive deeper into the coding tomorrow and dig into some great challenges! Overall, they have really enjoyed getting to learn about a different robot and one that requires more building and understanding of moving parts than compared to the EV3 or NXT robots.


Red/Blue Groups

They spent half of their day with Dr. Testa extracting DNA from a strawberry! They were very careful scientists with their tools and were amazed at what the DNA looked like! They also explored different types of DNA and how scientists use DNA to look at what living things are made of.

Yellow/Green Groups

It was bridge building day with Dr. Thomas! For a creative warm up, the students had to build the tallest free-standing structure they could, with very limited supplies. Then they moved on to bridge building, where they talked about supply and demand and material costs. After weighing through all their options, they had to build the sturdiest bridge with the cheapest cost. We had some amazing, creative, and sturdy bridges today!

Robotics for Elementary

All the technology was working today, so the camp staff were extra-thrilled! They got into some cool building challenges and really are getting the hang of programming their robot to do different things. There was lots of dancing, high-fives, and positive words and excitement throughout the day as their confidence increased with programming.

In their words…

  • I learned that you can get DNA out of things.
  • That everything that is on the world is made of the things on the periodic table.
  • The middle [of a bridge] is not the strongest part.
  • I learned to proberly (properly) + creadivly (creatively) bild (build) a bridge.
  • if the bridg(e) falls you can all ways fix it.
  • I learned about strcutures. and also learned to keep trying
  • that evrybody (everybody) has divrint (different) DNa’s.
  • that you can all ways fix it.
  • How to desighsin (design) different things.
  • Yes [I would like to learn more], because I want to see other fruit and people’s DNA.

Conversation Starters…

Yellow/Green Groups

  • What do bridges need to be strong?
  • How did you decide what materials to use for your bridge?
  • How did you decide on your design for your bridge?
  • How did your bridge do when you tested it?
  • How tall was your tower you built?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Red/Blue Groups

  • What is DNA?
  • What things have DNA?
  • How did you extract DNA from the strawberry?
  • What did it look like?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Vex Robotics

  • How different was it to build the Clawbot compared to the EV3 (or other robot they’ve built)? What kind of tools did you have to use?
  • How are you feeling about programming in RobotC? What makes it different from other computer programming you’ve done?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Picture of the Day…

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