Grade 4-6 students at Crestwood STEM School are seen participating in a two-hour robotics workshop Friday morning held by volunteer employees of Best Buy through the compnay's outreach Geek Squad Academy.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
It was a Friday morning full of programming and problem solving for several local students who participated in a robotics workshop held by volunteer members of Best Buy’s Geek Squad Academy.
The workshop, open to Grade 4-6 students at Crestwood STEM School, taught students the basic algorithms and programming skills needed to guide a small robot – similar to a robot vacuum cleaner – through a life-sized maze mapped on the floor.
Local Best Buy employees volunteered their time to host the two-hour outreach workshop, aimed at engaging children with technology. Best Buy also provides all the student learning materials, including the robots.
“We’re teaching them how to do programming, teaching them how to do trial-and-error debugging and kind of understand all the work that goes into their video games or their toys,” explains Matthew Maillet, local store manager. “And just make them think about technology in a different way and see how easy it is to integrate into our daily lives.”
Dave Van Leeuwen, lead teacher of education of technology with the Medicine Hat Public School Division, says the students who participated in the workshop are eager to learn more about.
“They just absolutely love robotics, being able to try something new and get into the challenge,” said Van Leeuwen. “It fits into the whole STEM kind of idea of Crestwood as well, focusing on that science and technology piece.
“They’re learning the whole idea of computer programming. The kids are building shapes, they’re navigating a maze or building letters, just a bunch of different challenges that they’ve set up for them.
Grade 4 student Bromley Dueck says he enjoys learning computer programming in his spare time and even dabbles in some video game design.
“I’m having tons of fun and I learned how much it can take to do a simple task on a robot,” said Dueck. “It’s actually quite fun, it can get boring sometimes, but in the end you make robots and it can be really fun.”
Hudson Schlinker, Grade 4, explains the challenges of coding a robot to find a way through the more challenging mazes the students were tasked with.
“There’s a lot more to code, and it’s really hard to code all that.” said Schlinker, who told the News he enjoys learning new skills. “You’ve got to try something new every day.”
The electronic retail chain began its Geek Squad Academy outreach program in 2015, allowing store members to volunteer their time to offer hands-on tech workshops to schools and non-profit organizations across Canada.
“Just get students to think differently on technology and get their minds more elastic to get them thinking in different ways and to appreciate technology and be more engaged,” said Maillet. “No matter what you want to do nowadays, in university or afterwards, technology plays a huge factor.”
