Robotics Team Heads to Regional Competition

Students from River Springs Charter School are set to face-off with robot builders in their first competition.

They are set to compete in the San Diego Regional FIRST Robotics Competition at the San Diego Sports Arena Friday and Saturday. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” and sixty teams are planning to compete.

Half homeschool students and half academy students between the ages of 14 and 18 make up the team, called the “Cyborg Zombies.”

Two new courses at the charter school made their participation in the contest possible: “Engineering Essential” and “Business.”

In the business class, students wrote the grant application to NASA that won them the $6,500 for entry into the competition. Students in the engineering class built the robots, said Marlene Kent, the science department chair.

“How better to prepare our students for their future roles in science & technology than to offer them practice in team work, meeting deadlines, web 2.0 communications, and a passion for learning?” said Kent in an e-mailed statement.

Click on the video to see the students getting ready for the competition.