Robots that swim, robots that think and robots that bend time: Monroe County schools have them all. Competitive robotics teams in the district’s middle schools give students a way to learn mechanics, programming, electronics and teamwork.
This recently paid off, with a team from Sugarloaf School taking first place in a competition involving 500 teams from 10 countries. Three teams of students, led by STEM educator Alena Ellerbee, worked through regional competitions to take first place, third place, and eighth place in a worldwide virtual competition.
The champions, known as team Sigma, include Chloe Huffman, Jose Carlos Escobar, Liam Powell and Calvin Lee.
The World Sphero Global Robotics Challenge is an annual competition organized by Sphero, a company specializing in educational robotics and coding tools. The challenge engages students in computational thinking, engineering and programming skills by tasking them with designing, coding and navigating through a series of missions and obstacles. The goal is to build creativity, teamwork and problem-solving skills in a fun, competitive environment.
The competition this year had the theme of a Portal Through Time. Students built up robots from kits, designed them to have special physical capabilities and then programmed the robots to perform specific tasks on an indoor competition field with the best possible speed. The competition started with 500 teams. In the end, 54 teams entered the championship. The Sigmas from Sugarloaf School won first place in the middle-school bracket.
The Sugarloaf Pink Flamingos took third place while the Sugarloaf Pythons won eighth place. Teams from Canada, Australia, Hawaii and other U.S. states filled the rest of the top spots. Many YouTube videos document the action.
Sugarloaf School robotics teams aren’t the only ones in Monroe County. Marathon Middle School and Key Largo School STEM teachers Rob Driscoll and Mark Leffler work with Sphero bots in their robotics classes.
Six middle schools from the district competed with swimming robots in the SeaPerch robotics tournament held at Founders Park in April. More than 130 students from six schools participated in the last event. SeaPerch in this county is a local competition. Plantation Key won the first-place trophy this year.
The work in robotics, along with other areas of study, teacher certification and competition led to this year’s certification of the Monroe County school district as a STEM District by Cognia, a global nonprofit organization working in the areas of educational accreditation.
“Acquiring STEM accreditation was of great importance to me,” said Teresa Axford, the outgoing school superintendent, “because it allows Monroe County students to enjoy the benefits that STEM partnerships make available such as our partnership with NOAA, National Marine Sanctuaries, Inwater Research Group, Mote Marine and many more. These partnerships create many opportunities for our students like field trips, courses of study, access to experts in the field and research opportunities.
“STEM certification adds credibility to the hard work of the school district and helps us to serve not only Keys students but our communities as well,” Axford continued. “Science coordinator Donna Tedesco spent many hours documenting our STEM activities, curriculum and partnerships to achieve this status.”
