Robotics is an invaluable resource for teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills. It also develops critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving, along with other 21st century skills such as creativity, imagination, curiosity, and innovation. A curriculum that includes robotics provides students with the ability to take an active role in their own learning and forms a necessary foundation for their lives in the ever-changing world.
Each year, TCEA provides its members with the opportunity to explore the impact of robotics. Participating students from elementary and secondary schools design, collaborate, plan, redesign, construct, create, assemble, invent, reinvent, write, present, and compete to see who has developed the smartest robot. The contests vary based on strategies that involve speed, accuracy, sensing objects, and light. A programmable robot is limited only by the imagination of its inventor.
Students not only have the opportunity to compete in a prescribed problem contest; there is also an open-ended invention contest. Students use marketing, programming, writing, constructing, and presentation skills to find a solution for a problem of their choice.
