Over the summer in 2020 with stay-at-home orders in place, our team had to get creative in deciding how to go about putting on our yearly Robo-camps. One student leader came forward with a plan for a five-day curriculum that he had developed prior, but hadn’t gotten the chance to use. He presented it to the team and the mentors, and got to work immediately. Coordinating the camp itself was a full team effort, with almost all of our students participating in some way— be it through leading groups and teaching the curriculum, hopping through breakout rooms for technical assistance, or even in making Kahoot! games for the campers to play before their lunch break. This time different from past camps, we departed from our Lego Mindstorms-centric curriculum by focusing on design and code, using two days per topic to teach the campers OnShape CAD and Mindstorms EV3 code. Then on the second day of each topic, we would assign them a challenge to complete on their own, and award group members “Sparkies”— awards named after our beloved thunderbolt mascot. We then finished off the week with a spaghetti and marshmallow tower competition, covering the basics of structural engineering in a fun and tasty way. Our camp, with the help of BPL and BUSD, got more registrants and daily participation than our in-person Robocamps had over the past few summers, and our team is really thrilled by how it turned out. We hope to do more!
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