HHS Robotic Team Captures First Place

Hart High School science teacher Robert O’Connor took three teams from Hart High School to Amarillo to compete in the regional Texas Computer Education Association Robotics Arena contest on Saturday. These teams placed first, third and fourth in the Advanced Arena division.

The first-place team members are David Cedillo, Reymond Holguin and Mayra Maldonado.

O’Connor said that the students had to design, create and program a Lego-based robot which could assist in search-and-rescue efforts. The robots had to amass points for completing various tasks, such as sorting and containing hazardous materials, erecting a radio tower, delivering food and medicine and clearing an air drop zone.
State-level competition will be held in mid-April at Deer Park (near Houston).

According to the Amarillo Globe-News, 126 students from area school districts, grades 4-12, made up 39 teams that designed and programmed Lego-based robots. The competition, held at the Region 16 service center headquarters, included arena and inventions competitions.
Arena robots were given the specific task of gathering food and medicine—red checkers—and clearing rubble and trash—black checkers—, according to Debbie Boyer, TCEA Area 16 director.

O’Connor’s school website page indicates that this school year is the first year that Hart High School has had a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) program. Students are learning computer programming basics, progressively complex problem-solving, simple mechanics, team building, public speaking, academic competition and relevant current events to a future career, and more. The robotics class is a STEM curriculum.

According to Wikipedia, STEM is an acronym typically used in addressing education policy and curricula choices in schools from kindergarten through college to improve America’s competitiveness in technology development.