Loveland elementary schoolers learn persistence through robots – Loveland Reporter-Herald

Lincoln Elementary School student Catherine Eades, 10, right, and Berthoud Elementary School student Kaia Cousino, 10, center, share some ideas while building their robots Wednesday during the summer robotics camp at Loveland High School. (Jenny Sparks/Loveland Reporter-Herald)

Elementary school students across the Thompson School District had the chance Wednesday to build and compete with robots in games like a robot soccer match and an obstacle course.

Designed for students in third, fourth and fifth grades, part of the reason to get kids started early, said Loveland High School Robotics teacher Mike Pintaric, is to get them to start making mistakes at an early age.

“My philosophy is ‘fail fast,’” Pintaric, who has hosted the summer robotics camp at LHS for over a decade, said. “I want these kids to push through that frustration.”

At first, he said, students were quick to find an adult to help with some problem, whether it was a misaligned wheel or a wiring problem with the small car-like robots they were building, but after some time and practice they began tinkering more or less on their own, coming up with ideas, implementing them, and only occasionally asking the adults and high school students operating the camp for help.

Dominik Harrelson, a fifth grader at Ivy Stockwell Elementary in Berthoud, was working with a partner to install a claw-like contraption on top of a car in preparation for the robot soccer match later in the day Wednesday.

“It’s pretty complicated,” he said as he troubleshooted the claw’s connection and tried to determine exactly how to attach it to the vehicle so it would be secure. Earlier in the day, he had put long braces on the outside of the car’s wheels to protect against opposing cars bumping into it. “Some of it’s simple though.”

Interestingly, starting students younger appears to increase the interest among female students. Robotics is a male-dominated field, Pintaric explained, but this year his camp is close to half female elementary schoolers.

He theorized that young girls, especially around the time they enter middle school, are socialized to believe that making a mistake, something he believes is crucial to robotics and STEM more broadly, is wrong. Fostering an interest in the subject when they’re young might help avoid this problem, he said.

“This is all risk-taking stuff, so it’s great to see girls taking those risks and coming to something they might not have been interested in 10 years ago,” he said.

“It’s pretty complicated, but some of it’s simple,” he said.

Dean Morgan, a senior who graduated over the weekend who served as a councilor for the camp, plans to study computer engineering with a focus on robotics when he begins college at South Dakota School of Mines next year.

First becoming interested in the field as a sophomore at LHS, Morgan said he’s fascinated with the opportunity robotics presents to create positive change.

“One great example of this is the medical industry,” he explained. “From the automation of MRIs and CT scans to the dentist office, they have little robots that can mill out a crown for you. It’s been able to make life so much easier, and the more people we can get making things, automating things, we can save lives.”