Rochambeau Students Take 2nd Place In Robotics Competition

From Region 15 Schools: Jason Hu and Kevin Jin, the two-member student team from Rochambeau Middle School (RMS), took second place in the state-wide Cyber Robotics Coding Competition (CRCC), held at the University of Bridgeport on December 6th , 2019, earning a $1000 scholarship to the University of Bridgeport.

10 students from RMS competed in the event, including six students from RMS who qualified to compete in the finals and the top four scorers from the RMS in-school finals, including Brandon Schuessler, Tristan Nee, Tripp Latta, Will Bradshaw, Vincent Kuo, Rowan Vas, Sammy Zackin, Lucas Picard.

The students participated as part of the computer course taught by Mr. Al Curtis, at RMS. The purpose of the competition is to engage students in Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) learning by using game-based competitions that feature virtual 3D animated robot and focuses on code development. Students from 30 middle schools from across Connecticut took part in the CT – CRCC grand finale competition. “The cyber robotics competition has been a great experience for all my students, it paired coding with math, engineering and robotics. It allowed students to see coding come to life in the form of a virtual robot which responded to the code they wrote. I was impressed with not just the growth in coding skills but also the degree of perseverance students demonstrated as they worked through some very difficult robot scenarios,” said Curtis. The CT- CRCC is a first-of-its-kind, free to participate, online coding and robotics tournament for students in grades 5-9. The state-wide competition is part of Intelitek STEM and CTE Education Foundation (ISCEF) 2019 Cyber Robotics Coding Competitions that was held in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Over 580 schools and 35,422 students in 14 states participated in the nation-wide competition. This is the second year the University of Bridgeport has hosted the event.

The 2019 CRCC competition is held in 3 stages. The first stage begins with Boot Camp where students and educators work on their choice of more than 50 lessons (called “missions”) to expand knowledge of coding and robotics fundamentals. The second stage of CRCC is the Qualifiers, where students work to complete over 20 missions and earn points for their school’s team. Schools with the highest average scores are invited to the finals. The third round, the Finals, is a live, in-person one-day event, where student representatives from each school are challenged to complete five more advanced missions (coding tasks) under a time constraint. Additional information about the competition can be found at: https://crcc.io/.

The press release was produced by Region 15 Schools. The views are the author's own.