Governor’s School campers program battle bots
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Students at a technology day camp held last week at the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (GSSM) had a blast learning how to create and program their own robots and games. The iTEAMS Xtreme: Next Generation program is a four-day camp where rising 6th, 7th, and 8th graders explore the world of micro-controllers, electronics, and circuits.
iTEAMS Xtreme is the latest brainchild of GSSM’s Outreach Center, where a team of instructors develops programs that deliver cutting edge educational opportunities and techniques to students and teachers across South Carolina.
About twenty years ago, GSSM started offering a summer residential experience called Go SciTech where South Carolina students spend a week at the Hartsville campus.
“They come here and take a really challenging course, spend a week in our dormitories, eat in our dining hall, learn in our classrooms and really get a chance to experience what it’s like being a student here,” says Randy LaCross, VP of Outreach and Research.
The summer residential program’s success inspired GSSM to replicate the experience with technology-based satellite camps across the state, an outreach that has run every year since 2008.
“We’ve been in Florence County, in Georgetown, Greenville, York, and all over the state as a result of the work we’re doing here locally,” says LaCross.
The success of the statewide camps led local parents to request a similar program for area kids, and GSSM responded by establishing the iTEAMS Xtreme: Next Generation program.
Using micro-controllers (Arduino-based circuit boards and software), students build and program robots to dance and do battle, or learn to create game tools like randomized dice, stopwatches, sensors and buzzers to be used in custom-built games.
“Micro-controllers are small computers that allow users to control devices like lights and switches,” says LaCross, adding that applications can range from small operations to complex ones – like the drive-through Christmas light shows that synchronize dazzling flashes with music played through your car’s radio.
“Recently, with these LED strips getting smaller and smaller, they’ve even developed light strips that you can weave into clothing and fabric,” says LaCross, noting that micro-controllers can make the LED strands light up in patterns and change colors. “It’s those same types of micro-controllers that we use in this camp to build and control robots.”
At the iTEAMS Xtreme camp, the robot battle games got students particularly fired up as kids paired off to build and program their modular war machines and set them loose in a makeshift arena. Each smartphone-guided robot used a lance (tipped with a long pushpin) to pop a balloon lashed to the opposing robot’s rear. Winners advanced through a bracket system until – after much trash talk and laughter – a champion was crowned and bragging rights were secured.
About 20 students enrolled in this first camp, and LaCross says he hopes interest will continue to grow and build among Darlington County students so more kids can see firsthand just how much fun robotics and programming can be.
To learn more about camps and programs at GSSM, visit them online at www.scgssm.org/summer. The South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics is located at 401 Railroad Avenue in Hartsville.