Daily Sitka Sentinel

It’s Try, Try Again for Kids’ Robotic Project

By ABIGAIL BLISS
Sentinel Staff Writer
    A group of  some 20 rising fourth, fifth, and sixth graders arrived at the Sitka Sound Science Center’s Recycled Robotics camp this morning to find an engineering problem waiting: How could they turn recycled materials into a “sky hook,” designed to dangle from a drone and pick up a bottle cap?

From left, Junior Jimmy, Alexandra Fujioka, Kayla Aaron and Vance Ballovich work on building a Lego drone today at the Sitka Sound Science Center. (Sentinel Photo)

    The kids busied themselves with popsicle sticks and paper clips, fastening rubber bands and string to their contraptions. Holding the hooks in their hands, they tested the designs, observed flaws, and tweaked components.
    Science Center education director Janet Clarke told the Sentinel that this process of testing and adjusting design solutions is one of the key components of the camp, which began Monday and runs through Thursday of this week.
    “This is all about that engineering design, test, observe, retest, do it over and over again,” she said. “It’s that iteration skill. That ability to say, ‘Let me try it this way based on what I know already. Let me see what happens.’”
    This core process represents one of the ways this week’s camp fits into the Science Center’s summer theme of “collections,” with the other tie-in being the compilation and reuse of materials.
    Just as students’ designs are constructed from bits and pieces of everyday objects, they are built from scraps of knowledge gleaned from past problem-solving attempts and lessons learned from peers’ successes and shortcomings.
    At the Recycled Robotics camp, each day presents participants with a new design challenge, as well as the opportunity to tinker with small drones provided by the science center.
    “Every morning we start with a challenge that is related to drones, but not directly involved with drones,” said Abe Kanter, one of the camp’s supervisors.

    He explained that this open-ended structure allowed kids a greater degree of creativity than they might be granted in classes during the school year.
    “There’s a type of open problem-solving that I think kids are getting a lot of at this camp,” he said. “It’s not about ‘solve this math problem’ or ‘write this type of paragraph.’ It’s, like ‘design something that can do X with these materials, and we’re going to give you no more instruction than that.’”
    On Monday, for example, campers worked individually or in pairs to build vessels from index cards, string, and rubber bands that would allow marshmallows, or “astronauts,” to land safely when dropped from a ladder.
    “If your marshmallows fall out, your guys are dead, your astronauts,” explained a camper named Emma.
    “If it landed right-side-up, or if your marshmallows didn’t fall out, you had succeeded,” added her friend.
    Only two of the previous day’s designs were successful, said Dustin Conover, a skills trainer at Youth Advocates at Sitka who is assisting with the camp.
    “Mine didn’t do so well, so that was hard for me,” said Scotty, 8. “But, we’re making hooks, and I think mine is going to work well.”
    For another camper, Alexandra, the hardest part of camp so far has been “figuring out how to fly the drones,” which have proved trickier to navigate than expected.
    “Those crash a lot,” she said.
    The challenge of navigating the drones provided program organizers the opportunity to practice the iterative process they preach. Kanter said the camp’s curriculum had been modified after the kids’ first attempts at flying the drones.
    “We had to adjust our expectations of these drones,” he said. “They’re basically just little motors and some Legos, and they are quite difficult to control and fly... We had some challenges planned out with obstacle courses and stuff, but we’re going to have to take those back a little.”
    Instead, today’s “flight school” lesson revolved around simply taking off and landing in a specific spot.
    Additionally, kids had the chance to add Lego pieces to their drones, with one drone for each group of four or five students. Before beginning to build, however, each group was required to agree upon a design, and put it down on paper.
    “One of the things that we’re definitely going to emphasize today is planning designs as a team, and just the skill of planning a design before you execute,” Kanter said.
    For some campers, the Recycled Robotics camp offers a series of new experiences.
    For others, its subject matter falls squarely within their wheelhouse.
    Scotty said he enjoyed science in school, an interest he may have inherited.
    “My mom is the science teacher, Ms. Golden,” he said, proudly.
    As for Alexandra, she said she signed up for this week’s camp because it aligned with her interests both at school and outside of the classroom.
    “I love engineering. I love robotics. I like to program stuff,” she said.