Middle school robotics team defends title

Photo

Neighbors | Submitted.The Poland Middle School Robotics team members successfully defended their title at the Northeast Ohio Robotics Education Program, held at the Beeghly Center on the Campus of YSU. The team includes (from left to right) Kate Landry, Mariah Mrofchak, Mark Stein, Kaitlin Shorter, Brendan Gage, Kristen Thompson, Connor Saxon, Chris Economus, Shane Starling, Sean Connelly and David Leech..

Poland Middle School Robotics team members successfully defended their title at the Northeast Ohio Robotics Education Program, held at the Beeghly Center on the campus of Youngstown State University on March 13.

This year’s competition theme was, “Ship Out!” and was designed to encourage participants to think about how robots are used in the manufacturing industry. Teams competed in five areas that included two games, robot design, team presentation and a technical journal.

Out of the five events, Poland Middle School participants received four first-place awards and one third-place award. The team also won the overall first-place award.

Team members included Sean Connelly, Chris Economus, Brendan Gage, Kate Landry, David Leech, Mariah Mrofchak, Connor Saxon, Kaitlin Shorter, Shane Starling, Mark Stein and Kristen Thompson. Patrick Williams was the team adviser.

Students were encouraged to think critically and use practical problem solving skills to design, build and program a robot that would be able to lift a block off a conveyor belt and successfully place it in a transportation area. Students were encouraged to use the Engineering Design Process throughout the experience, which focuses on defining a problem, coming up with possible solutions, testing the solutions and evaluating which one worked the best.

Students created a Technical Journal to explain how they were able to solve the given tasks along with their research on this year’s theme: How has automation replaced manual effort or how machines have been improved?

Each stage of the design process was discussed and conclusions were made about the entire process as a whole. A group presentation was required, summarizing the entire experience from start to finish.

The presenters used an online program called Prezi (which is a cooler version of PowerPoint) to explain what the team did and incorporated videos to show the judges their successes and failures.

An online blog was kept, chronicling the entire process. To view the blog, visit www.polandbulldogs.com, click on Poland Middle School, Staff, Patrick Williams and then Robotics Competition Team 2012.