7 News Belize

The Robotics Revolution Arrives
posted (July 6, 2018)
For some of us, the concept of building robots began and ended with our LEGO sets when we were 5 years old. Well, a group of St. Johns High School and St. Martin's De Porres Primary School students are taking it to another level by building and programming robots that can do a lot of cool tricks. It surely sounds fun but it still takes a lot of science, engineering and math to bring those robots to life. 4 volunteers from the St. Louis University High School in the US are the ones who brought this robotics camp to Belize. I stopped by SJC to see these young inventors and their creations in action.

Courtney Weatherburne reporting
There are many STEM programs for kids in the US. FIRST Robotics is one of the major ones.

The kids have to design, build and program their own robots. It is a lot of work but it's also fun.

The volunteers from St. Louis University High School plan to get a program like that started on a smaller scale at St. John's High School, through the Clavius Project. This is the first time the team has taken the program outside of the US and Belize was the first stop.

Today was just the introductory session for the kids from St. Johns College and St. Martin De Porres Primary. And some of them caught on pretty quickly.

Jeff Pitts, Director, Clavius Project
"We just want to get everybody in one room kind of introduce the concept and let them in a fun way build the robots. Once the robots are all built they will come and we will break them up into 4 different camps so it will be smaller groups so they can actually learn how to use the computer, how to program the robot, how to make the robot do different things."

"So it is just like the spring board to start robotics here in Belize and we are super excited."

A spring board that they hope will inspire more kids to pursue careers in STEM.

Jeff Pitts, Director, Clavius Project
"It is all designed so that the student can discover and learn about STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. And we use a little bit of all four of those things in robotics. So our goal is to help our students discover about STEM and robotics. And if we can light a fire in their belly and they get interested and they start doing it and they start getting really good, maybe they start thinking when they come to St. John's college about pursuing Science and Mathematics and maybe some technical fields like IT and then they go on in their education and then they are the future engineers, scientists, mathematicians to just, because that is where all the jobs are going. I mean in the United States right now there is 5.8 million STEM jobs available in the United States."

And to ensure that some of these same kids take up those high paying STEM posts in the US, St. John's High School has to keep their students passionate and engaged. They plan to do that through a robotics club.

Mirtha Peralta, President, St. Johns College
"We are planning and we are already working with Mr. Pitts and St. Louis High School in moving this forward so it doesn't end here. We are going to have a club at the high school and we are going to continue the robotics during the year as a club and also we are already planning for next year and the years to come."

30 St. John's College students along with 24 St. Martin's De Porres Primary School students are participating. The team of volunteers will stay in Belize for 3 weeks. Last week they held an education training for the high school and junior college students along with teachers. Then, for the next two weeks the students will be separated into camps to learn more about robotics. A Jamboree will be held on July 21st at St. Martin De Porres to end the program.

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