{"id":4000,"date":"2018-12-20T00:28:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T05:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/?p=4000"},"modified":"2020-08-17T17:34:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:34:18","slug":"robotics-the-sport-of-stem-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/2018\/12\/20\/robotics-the-sport-of-stem-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Robotics, the sport of STEM education"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: The Daily Memphian<\/a>
\nBy Michelle Corbet
\nUpdated: December 19, 2018 4:00 AM CT<\/p>\n

A new sport is emerging in local middle schools \u2014 robot battles.<\/p>\n

St. Mary\u2019s Episcopal School, a private all-girls pre-K through high school, held its first VEX IQ Challenge Tournament at its East Memphis campus last weekend.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The event sold out within 30 minutes. <\/p>\n

If an indication is needed to show how popular robotics competitions have become among kids, that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told the girls that robotics is a new sport,\u201d said Meagan Michael, a lower school science teacher at St. Mary\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Participants came from Piperton, Medina, Collierville and Memphis. The 32 competing teams were made up of co-ed elementary and middle school students ranging from 3rd to 8th grade.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this generation of students,\u201d Michael said. \u201cThey are interested in STEM and robotics.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of schools, including St. Mary\u2019s, also are pushing robotics because it involves problem solving.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen building robots, it requires a lot of skills students might not learn in the classroom,\u201d Michael said.<\/p>\n

Parents are recognizing the benefit of robotics competitions as a way to prepare their child for jobs of the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents realize their girls are learning how to think,\u201d said Hilary Robinson, head of St. Mary\u2019s Lower School. \u201cWe say this a lot around here; we\u2019re preparing these girls for jobs that don\u2019t even exist yet. If they can learn to problem solve and think, then they can ultimately do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Competitions are not solely about building robots, they also involve design, writing and public speaking.<\/p>\n

St. Mary\u2019s has been working to host a VEX Robotics competition since Michael joined the school as a new teacher last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was already involved with the VEX program and brought that to St. Mary\u2019s,\u201d said Laura Leathers, St. Mary\u2019s assistant head of school. \u201cWe\u2019ve been in conversation about growing the program and hosting a competition here.\u201d <\/p>\n

St. Mary\u2019s is part of Girl Powered, Redefining the Face of STEM, a global initiative to increase girls\u2019 access to and confidence in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2016 by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation and VEX Robotics, Girl Powered is striving for 50 percent of robotics competitors to be girls.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal is shattering the status quo.<\/p>\n

Currently, girls make up about 23 percent of VEX Robotics participants and women represent 24 percent of the STEM workforce, according to Girl Powered.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main goal is to open (robotics) up to the greater Memphis area,\u201d Leathers said. \u201cAll these different VEX teams can come together, learn, compete and meet each other in this common space.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: The Daily Memphian By Michelle Corbet Updated: December 19, 2018 4:00 AM CT A new sport is emerging in local middle schools \u2014 robot battles. St. Mary\u2019s Episcopal School, a private all-girls pre-K through high school, held its first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memphis_robotics","category-robot-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4739,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}