The Appalachia Branch of YES (Young Eisner Scholars) hosted a robotics workshop for two different groups of scholars on July 16 and 17 at the Ashe campus of Wilkes Community College. Jose Lopez, the YES STEM Director and National Operations Director, traveled from the national office in Los Angeles to the New York branch and then drove to Ashe to facilitate the workshops. Jose is also a YES alumnus who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. He’s literally a rocket scientist!
The purpose of this workshop was to introduce students at an early age to robotics and engineering. While learning the fundamentals of electronics and coding, students built fun, engaging projects to challenge their critical thinking skills. They had time to tinker and use their creativity to explore some of the coding. Scholars worked with the SparkFun Electronics Inventor's Kit to build various projects including a light-sensitive LED light, a game with an LCD display similar to the game Head’s Up, and a self-driving robot.
Each of these projects were mentioned as a favorite when given a feedback survey. One scholar said he wished that he had “more time to really absorb the knowledge that would’ve been helpful to develop our knowledge of [robotics].” Approximately 60% of our polled students said that they were interested in participating in a robotics class or club in the future. This feedback is important to see what type of activities are of interest to scholars and to direct future programming. Hands-on experiences like this expose our scholars to different types of thinking and narrow down their interests as they look ahead toward their futures.