THUNDER BAY – Senior elementary school students tackled a pair of unique challenges on Thursday.
Grade 7 and 8 students from Pope John Paul II and Bishop E.Q. Jennings were involved in a Lego robotics and green energy challenge as part of the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) program.
TBCDSB technology coordinator Paul Mackett, who helped organize the event with experiential learning consultant Marcy Barry, said that the importance of Thursday’s activities is extremely important.
“To be able to give our kids a snippet of what they’re going to see as they go into high school, college and university is huge,” Mackett said.
“The design, construction and engineering lessons learned in these projects are part of skill-based jobs and this helps to enhance the experience as they look at what they can do in the future.”
In the green energy challenge, students designed, planned and created a wind turbine. The units had to go through a test of strength and efficiency when faced with forced air to determine the highest voltage.
Meanwhile, the robotics challenge saw them plan, code and test their EV3 bricks to complete a series of instructions to push, lift and manoeuvre objects in a timed challenge.
“It’s been pretty cool because everybody has been doing their own thing,” said Luca Bee, a Grade 8 student at Pope John Paul II.
“I’ve learned quite a lot, especially with the robotics and how to code everything, which I didn’t know anything about before. I’m definitely interested in learning more about that.”
Joel Biesenthal, who is the head coach for the Bishop E.Q. Jennings STEM team, said the students have been hard at work on their projects for the last month in preparation for Thursday’s event.
“We want to give our kids as many opportunities as we can,” Biesenthal said.
“We want our kids to be able to solve the problems of the future, especially with climate change. They are going to need an understanding of robotics, and they are going to need an understanding of team building and problem solving, which they worked on in the wind turbine project.”
The top teams in each challenge will represent the TBCDSB at the Skills Ontario provincial elementary competition in Toronto on May 6.
