Students from the Bob Graham Education Center impressed judges during winter robotics competitions.
The Miami Lakes school has six robotics teams and many of the middle school students are new to the world of robotics contests said Marilyn Dieppa, the school’s STEM teacher and team coach.
Three of the teams took home awards this season, ahead of the state competition to be held March 6 in Pembroke Pines.
Schools from across the state will send their best teams to the Charles F. Dodge City Center.
“It’s so exciting for them for them to go to states,” Dieppa said. “It’s a big thing.”
BGEC’s Dream Team, Code Masters and Robotic Knight team recently won awards in the design category.
Dieppa said the design category is made up of two parts: The engineering notebook and the interview portion.
The engineering notebook is the assembly plan for the machines, and the kids show what materials are used and how they created the working model which is presented to judges.
The interview was won based on how the team answered judges’ questions about their projects.
“They don’t tell you how to build it, but you have to build within certain parameters,” Dieppa said.
The robot must be a certain size and shape determined by the VEX IQ manual.
Dieppa said for many of the students, it’s their first season of competitions and they are looking forward to the state contest.