— Eighth-grader Dominic Mejia selected a square from the list of options on the program he was using. He reshaped it to become a door as classmate Nayelli Muniz watched. “You know you can just select a door from the options,” Nayelli said.
“Yeah, but I wanted to create my own door,” Dominic responded. The students are part of the middle school’s Robotics class, where students learn about operating a robot through computer coding, 3D printing and computer-aided design. “Often when people think of robotics, they think of building a robot,” Robotics teacher Kirsti Dickinson said.
“In this class, we don’t build a robot, but we do focus on coding so students learn how to get a robot to do something.” In the semester class, students use rovers that provide the basics in coding. From there, students work with 3D printers, learning to use code to direct the devices to build objects.
Lastly, they use the Tinkercad: first to build a snowman, then a house, a mini-mall and finally, a city. “It makes me want to pursue a career in designing,” said eighth-grader Mariah Elizabeth Young-Manning, who added that she has enjoyed fashion design, but had not thought of design in terms of architecture until taking the robotics class. “I found it to be more difficult than I thought,” said eighth-grader Adriyanna Basaladua as she tried to make the pillars around her house even.
“I wanted my design to be a modern house because I love how it looks with its sleek design.�.