School-goers have been given a taste of what to expect in the expanding field of technology.
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The National Science Week Schools’ STEM (science, technology, energy and maths) Expo was held in Bega on Friday, attended by eight primary and secondary schools.
Each school made a project and were treated to two workshops on the day, one about coding run at CoWS Near The Coast and another on robotics led by Narooma High School’s Robo Rebels.
In the Bega library, the Robo Rebels taught participants how to program EV3 Mindstorm robots using an iPad.
Bega Valley Public School Year 6 pupils Rhys Lawler and Laurence Janiola said they had learnt a lot at the workshops.
“I never knew you could build robots out of Lego!” Laurence said.
At the same workshop, Tanja Public School’s Year 4 pupil Otis Waratah said he was learning how to rotate and move robots.
“I learnt they can sense the colour of the floor and the surface of the floor,” he said.
Year 4 pupils at Quaama Public School Connor Muirhead and Nick Platts both said they would like to work with robots when they grow up.
“It would be fun to experiment and create robots,” Nick said.
The schools’ STEM projects included a redesigned bike, dice made with a 3D printer and a recycled materials rabbit hutch from Candelo Public School; a working traffic light and automatic door model programmed using Arduino chips from Lumen Christi Catholic College; videos of the design, construction and launches of water powered rockets from Bega Valley Public; windmills, Rube Goldberg machines and catapults from Tanja Public; Sphero robots from Tathra Public School and a robotics display from Ulladulla High School.
Each participating school received an award of $100 to support STEM projects and Ulladulla High was awarded $200 for their robot.
The Robo Rebels were also awarded $100 for their participation and delivering the robotics workshops.