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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Students interacted with one of the robots during the Robotics Open House on May 2 at Austintown Fitch High School.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Children at the Austintown Robotics Open House on May 2 watched as the robots were being controlled by Robotics students.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Austintown Robotics students showed how different robots work during the Open House at Austintown Fitch High School on May 2.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.One of the Robotics students worked with one of the robots during the Robotics Open House at Austintown Fitch High School on May 2.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.A FIRST LEGO MINDSTORM display was set up at the Robotics Open House at Austintown Fitch High School on May 2.
By ALEXIS BARTOLOMUCCI
Austintown Fitch Robotics hosted its first open house on May 2 at Fitch High School.
The open house was hosted to introduce the robotics program to the community, students and people from other schools. There were several in robotics at the event to give information to the guests who attended and had questions.
“The point was to get the community to understand this is what we do. It also gives us a recruitment effort to get all the kids in the community to come out and see that this is here and they know there are robotics in the schools, if they want to join a robotics team we’re here,” said Andy Yantes, Robotics mentor.
Austintown is one of the only school districts in the area that offers a robotics program for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. This year, there are 70 students in the robotics club in Austintown. There are seven teams throughout the school system and each team consists of 10 students. The open house showed demonstrations of FIRST robotics programs that are available for the students in every grade.
FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology - was created in 1989 to spark young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. FIRST is a non-for-profit that designs accessible and innovative programs that will motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math.
“I like being able to endorse STEM in the community,” said sophomore Elise Yantes. “I like not only being able to show our program, but I also like being in a program that you can help the community and we volunteer as much as we can. It’s really nice to be somewhere where we can help as much as teach.”
There have been more younger girls that have shown interest in the robotics program and STEM. Part of that is due to the fact that they are seeing how fun it is and all of the different opportunities being in a program like that can bring them.
“One of my favorite parts is getting to show younger girls what it’s like to be a part of an engineering field, just because there’s so few,” said sophomore Taylor Baer.
Students in robotics enjoy being given the opportunity to show what they do, where they go and how they form bonds with each other by being part of a special program. Being able to showcase the different projects the students work on gives the community an idea of what the program is about and sparks the interest of students and makes them what to join.