Robotics
Twelve Robotics students from the Middle School STEAM in Action Afterschool Program took part in the Melbourne Regional RoboCup Rescue Maze Competition recently. Using a creative design process, students were required to design, build, and program a robot to find and assist victims in a disaster area. The victims are trapped in a building represented by a competition maze.
Our Robotics teams were:
- Robbie Carter
- Hiranya Chaturvedi
- Alex Stewart
- Charlie Cameron
- Alex Abdurahman
- Ashton Wain
- Jerry Chang
- Tyler Luo
- Alysha Veith
- Minuki Vidanagamage
- Justin Zhu
- Jonathan Ye (who is on the team but did not attend the competition)
All robotics students are acknowledged for the admirable way in which they embraced the pressure of competition day. They trouble-shooted, problem solved and debugged and they sought advice and coached each other in a collaborative and supportive environment. Three Tintern teams made it to the final round where four teams competed in a MegaMaze! Congratulations to Team Robbie and Hiranya for placing first, Team Alex A and Ashton for second and Team Justin and Jonathan for third place. Special mention to Justin Z and Alex S who operated as solo robot handlers for part of the day.
Well done to all the teams and we wish you all the best at the State competition.
Karen Dang | Robotics/MS STEAM in Action
STEAM in Girls’ Junior School
‘Education is not the learning of facts but training the mind to think’.
Albert Einstein
In STEAM our focus has continued to be on thinking, problem-solving and creativity with a solution-based mindset.
This Term we engaged in hands-on practical engineering-based learning experiences. We also built on the science and technology explored in depth earlier in the year, and continued to use coding, AI and other programs in our engineering explorations.
At the start of the Term we investigated bridge design, function and form. We experimented with shapes, prisms and manipulating materials to leverage forces to create compression and tension to be able to support more weight or load. We had the opportunity to learn about bridges around the world and in history, stories, mythology and art. Given a selection of materials we designed and made our own bridges, testing to see how much weight they can carry!
We then moved from bridge engineering to electrical engineering and learned about circuits. Again, in an open-ended, inquiry-led process, we solved problems using trial and error and worked creatively and collaboratively towards a shared task and goal.
As you can see in the photos we have had a lot of fun too!
‘I used to think that these amazing, fun, unique, inspiring colourful, useful, very easy and fun to learn from circuit tasks were boring, uninspired and time-wasting. But I was proven so, so wrong! This circuit task was so fun and life-changing and I learnt so much from it. I also really loved the AI Firefly and Scratch tasks. It felt really nice to experience and learn something new! I also really loved doing the building bridges task, the magic pebbles are so, so, so pretty and fun to work with and it felt really cool to see how many little transparent pebbles the little amount and thin paper could hold! I can’t believe that two sheets of paper could hold more pebbles than me!’
Jessie Huang 6A
Emily Mars | STEAM Teacher Prep to Year 6
Forces
Our year 7 students have been learning about forces in Science over the past few weeks. One task in this unit has been to build three ‘robocopters’, varying the mass, or the wing length or other aspects of the design. 7C tested their Robocopters today, dropped them from the balcony in the swimming pool area and timing how long they took to reach the ground.’
Lana Derry | Head of Science
