›› The player from Overland High School was the clear underdog as the match entered its final seconds.
He was torn up, his body wrecked by three days of heated competition. Rival players were about to score the deciding points to clinch the game. As Aurora students looked on from the sidelines at the University of Denver, the end seemed near. That’s when Flavio, a 120-pound metal robot designed to pick up balls, shoot baskets and run defense, came through. In the final seconds of the 2012 Colorado FIRST Robotics Competition, Flavio’s metal arm tossed a Hail Mary pass and secured a victory for the Overland High School Blazer Bots.
“I was really impressed with my students. They worked really, really hard. They were out on the field for every part of the game,” said Kate McDonnell, a technology teacher and robotics sponsor at Overland. “It was huge for a second-year team to be there and have a decent showing.”
The story of the Overland High Blazer Bots’ victory at the state level reflects the growing popularity and prominence of robotics in schools across the city. Middle and high schools in both the Cherry Creek and Aurora Public Schools districts play host to robotics clubs of different levels. Students build machines out of Legos, sheet metal and circuit boards. They construct machines with wheels, arms and guidance systems. Across the city, students are spending their after-school hours constructing complex machines that can shoot baskets, carry beanbags and play balancing games on a seesaw.
But robots are making their way from after-school clubs to the regular school day. As both districts look at ways to incorporate more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) into students’ curriculum, robots have become a platform to tackle several subjects.
“They have to know trig, they have to know algebra, they have to know a number of subject areas well to be able to perform the tasks,” said Richard Charles, director of STEM education at Cherry Creek.
This year, Jay Moore is coaching Cherry Creek’s bid for a national robotics title. Moore, a teacher at Grandview High School, led his team to a victory at the 2013 Colorado VEX Championship. The final event saw robots racing to place beanbags in color-coded troughs.
Moore, who’s taught science and math in the district for more than 20 years, said the contest was about more than straight STEM. He compared his role to his time as a softball coach, and he said the Grandview robotics team learned similar lessons about cooperation and competition.
“The first year that we did the state competition, there were about 12 teams,” said Moore, who coached his first robotics team at a state competition in 2004. “Now there’s more like 65, including middle school and high school. It’s becoming more and more a competition with different levels of students.”
At Gateway High School, digital electronics and aerospace engineering classes make use of robots with highly specialized functions. Students design software and programming for robots that can work on satellites and rovers bound for outer space.
“They’re tangible. The students can see the results of choices they make and how they program them,” said Andrew Woods, a math and engineering teacher at Gateway. “They also have a cool factor to them.”
That cool factor helped the Overland team make an impressive showing in last year’s Colorado FIRST Robotics Competition. Flavio and the Blazer Bots team would go on to get trounced in the world championships months later, but the victory at the state level was an important milestone.
“I really feel like this is catching,” McDonnell said. n