Troy School Gets New Robotics Club

Submitted by Troy School District 30-C

Photo: William B. Orenic Intermediate School sixth-graders Davis Robinson, Dominick Ciamprone and Mark Prost work on programming their robot “Echo” in the school’s new Robotics Club.

Although Robotics Club is brand new to William B. Orenic Intermediate School this year, its fifth- and sixth-grade members have already taken a shine to it. The 26 students have assembled their Lego Mindstorm robots and are now learning to program them. The club’s sponsor, WBO science teacher Rebekah Tazelaar, said the teams are doing a good job at working together coding the programs for their robots to perform certain tasks.

The students had several different reasons for signing up for the club, and they all said they were enjoying it.

“I joined because I like to build things,” Davis Robinson said. “I want to be an engineer/inventor.”

“I joined to learn more about programming,” Mark Prost said.

Dominick Ciamprone said he had seen something like their robot in a San Diego museum and has wanted to program one ever since.

Three of the club’s robots were donated to them by the University of Illinois Extension, as were two of the robots at Troy Community School District 30-C’s Troy Middle School Robotics Club, led by science teacher Ruth Juhant. Both schools’ clubs will begin working on their projects for competition in early 2016 when the University of Illinois Extension reveals the challenge. The competition will take place in April.