A need for teens and children to experience a team environment that developed their design skills was heard throughout the Upper Perk School District. UENA staff, Beth Roth and Scott Roth, were already utilizing the Upper Perk Community Life Center for other teen programming. With Beth’s background in robotics and international teen competition it only made sense to birth a larger robotics club. The club went from 12 students to over 40 students in just 2 years. After 2 years the team is competing in back to back world championship events. Over 33 countries participate in the VEX IQ competions
Program Information:
VEX IQ is an exciting robotics platform which encourages STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning in young students. The kids snap together the VEX IQ parts to build a powerful robot to perform in challenges designed by the Robotics Education Corporation (REC) that teach students teamwork, cooperation, communication, inventive thinking, digital literacy and problem solving.
Teams will love driving their robots in 60 second Teamwork Challenge matches and will test their skills in two optional 60 second Robot and Programming challenges.
The primary focus of Upper Perk Robotics is STEM Education
- Introducing students to ways to apply the science and math they have already learned in school to real-world challenges
- Training students in ways to work together, problem solve, communicate
- Developing their engineering and technology skills in applied problem solving
- Demonstrating how the design process works and why the process is important in all problem solving
The secondary focus of Upper Perk Robotics is Competition
The Robotics program runs out of the Upper Perk Community Life Center on Monday OR Wednesday evenings beginning in September, 2014, and running through to the end of February, 2015. Right now all spots are filled for Monday evenings. Spots are still available for Wednesday evenings.
If you would like to learn more about how you can utilize robotics in your area please contact Scott Roth via email: scott@urbanexpression.org