As part of a STEM project developing useful skills, TCS 8th graders are designing, building and programming an entire robot, creating an entire marketing campaign alongside it.

The 8th Tech classes are divided into 3 groups; marketing, programming, and mechanical. Students are sorted into these groups based on their interests and skills, where they develop these skills further and learn more about their specific areas.

“The idea with this class is to create a robot, or design a robot, create build and design a robot,” says John Higuita, 8th grade technology teacher.

The marketing team basically takes care of the “campaign” and advertising of the robot, as the final product is to be presented as an actual marketing product. These students are in charge of designing the whole “artistic” part of the project; an appealing logo, name, and even uniforms for the tech team. The mechanical team, on the other hand, builds and assembles the robot.

“Marketing [team] designs the whole identity of the robot; a logo for the team, a name for the team, a uniform for the team, a website, and the mechanical team designs the parts and later builds the robot” Says Higuita.

The programming team, the more technical aspect of the project, are learning basic coding and programming. After a few weeks of assignments, these students are then ready to insert various instructions onto the robot.

“Right now, they are learning programming basic skills, using a basic program called Arduino,” says the tech instructor.

The project not only teaches students a lot of basic skills like programming, but also provides with a challenge, which they must work as a team to fix; that way, it develops both teamworking and problem solving skills.

“For me, the hardest part of the project is modeling the parts, as we haven’t learned really well how to yet, so I have to ask my friends for help,” says Juan Salvador Alvarez, 8th mechanical team student.

This project has also proved to be rigorous; this creates hard working students, who, in order to meet the deadlines, must really put in all of their efforts each piece of the project.

“They gave us really little time to build all of the project,” says Oriana Garces, a student on the marketing team, when asked what she thought was the hardest part of the project.

As for the whole project, Higuita says the purpose of it is to teach students about what he argues is one of the most important skills for the modern day worker.

“One of the most important fields in the world right now has to do with robotics; with robotics they are going to learn math, logical reasoning, and other specifics such as 3d modeling,” said Higuita.