Answer: the First Ever Providence Engineering Summer Camp!
Day 1--If You Build It, They Will Come
Pardoning the Field of Dreams misquote, Day 1 was a foray into the world of architecture and design. The upper elementary students broke into four teams, and designed their cityscape. With only a few constraints in place, they freely designed bridges, hotels, apartment complexes, playgrounds, and the mysterious "Geico district." We're still not sure what the market is for robot insurance.
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Alena and team search architectural
magazines for inspiration
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| The first few buildings emerge on Day 1 |
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| Sturdy apartment complexes and hotels begin to fill the landscape |
Day 2--Light It Up
After a brief lesson in electronics (diodes, conductors and resistors, oh my!), the students set about electrifying their buildings. Silver foil ran this way and that, transporting those much-needed electrons hither and yon. The prize for this day had to go to Tys' group, with their carefully designed master control panel complete with disco dimmers.
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| Robot City and Britt's Bridge come to life! |
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| One participant's entrepreneurial skills come to light |
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Tys overseeing his team's very
formidable end of town
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Arguably, they should be called 4D printers (since they operate in both space and time), but whichever side you take in this controversy, you have to agree they are a lot of fun. Students learned the fundamentals of computer-aided design (CAD), and then produced their various artifacts: signs, statues, elevators, desks, and... an artifact. The New Matter MOD-t printers ran hot for the remaining days, with many students producing two or more different designs.
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| An small sample of the dozens of printed designs generated by the camp participants |
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| Students sit with Alena, eagerly watching their creations emerge layer by layer |
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| A tiny blue fountain sits proudly on a street corner |
If all that wasn't enough already, each student was given their own tiny programmable robot. The Ozobot packs a whole lot into one cubic inch, with students writing code for following lines, flashing lights, and dance routines. The robots were programmed in two different ways: with colored racetrack lines, and then alternatively with a block-based in-browser coding language.
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These colored trails give the robot a path to follow and instructions
along the way
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| Lots of practice with the tiny bots |
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| The block-based coding system is a snap! |
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Many participants created special
mazes and challenges
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Day 5--Do Over!
The week finished with a chance to go back to anything and everything! LEGO Mindstorms was used to power an elevator and merry-go-round, more CAD pieces were printed, the Geico district was finally lit up in a convincing fashion, and the robots ran amok. (In the best kind of way!)
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| The Geico District--now a blazing panoply of light! |
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| Six robots come out for a dance-off! |
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Jake adds the finishing touches to our
once-humble board--now transformed!
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We'll finish with a huge thank you to our marvelous high school assistants, taken from the ranks of our own Engineering Academy; Tys, Jake, Alena, and Samy all did a fantastic job, and we hope they get some good rest this summer.
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