At the beginning of this school year, educational investor Rural Technology Fund contributed toward a project supporting the Wolf-Bytes Robotics team at Loranger Middle School.
Science teacher Eric Ballard sought to add a LEGO SPIKE set and expansion kit to the team in anticipation of the team’s second season in the FIRST Lego League.
Ballard said his team operates with various student leadership positions, offering many opportunities for individuals to take charge and tackle projects. With the addition of the LEGO SPIKE set, students would be able to use Scratch programming as well as learn Python.
The Wolf-Bytes have now successfully completed their second FIRST Lego League season, according to RTF.
The team is about more than just competing – they embody a strong sense of community.
It was a particularly challenging year for the Wolf-Bytes. The team endured hardships including a hurricane, a local tragedy and the ongoing pandemic, but the team persisted and found more ways to spread good within their district, according to RTF.
Ballard said about his team, “During the first semester, they were able to log just over 250 combined STEM Outreach hours. Some of these hours came from attending STEM festivals and providing science activities for younger students, and other hours were spent designing, painting, organizing, and servicing equipment for our new school-wide STEM Lab that will serve the entire student body.”
Students dedicated their time to help create the lab, volunteering over the holiday break. They gathered materials from around the building and repaired many items, and it now serves the whole middle school as an evolving, hands-on learning space.
The Wolf-Bytes are currently focusing on training new teammates as they prepare for the WWII Museum Challenge, planning to log similar training hours while practicing with the SPIKE Robot.
“It is our goal to make everyone on our team proud coders/programmers,” Ballard said.
This story is an edited version of a story posted by Rural Technology Fund to their blog at ruraltechfund.org.
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