Saskatchewan Polytechnic welcomed Saskatchewan schools to their Saskatoon campus for their tenth annual Robot Rumble on March 22.
Out of 120 high school teams, four local schools competed with Three Lakes sending two, Annaheim sending three, Bruno sending two, and Kinistino sending six.
This has been nine years that Sheldon Larson, teacher and career counsellor at Kinistino School, has been taking students to robot rumble with students enjoying the competition.
Besides learning about coding and electronics, this was also a great opportunity for the social aspects as well, says Larson.
“They meet a lot of kids from other schools, discuss different robot styles, and discuss what they do at their school.”
The competition has even led to a better social environment in Kinistino School with students, with the help of Larson, starting a robotics club in the school.
Corrinne Arnold with Bruno School says her students learn much more than just robotics with the program but also problem solving.
“There’s a motherboard with a lot of holes and columns and rows. They have to know where to put the resisters and follow diagrams and problem solve your way as you go through it.”
That is what students enjoy the most, says Arnold, as the students move from one problem to another to make their robot run.
Starting the program was an opportunity to spark interest in careers, training, and education in robotics and electronic systems, says Jamie Hilts, Dean for School of Mining, Energy, and Manufacturing at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.
“The first thing really was to create something to help students understand that this is a real potential career,” he says.
And that potential is growing, says Hilts, with both the industry becoming more advanced than 10 years ago and the event itself also growing with only a small number of schools competing at the first robot rumble.
Now they have 50 different schools coming to compete with 120 different teams.
“It certainly has done some of the work that we wanted to do in a sense of a growing familiarity and interest in the field of robots and electronic systems. I think it’s achieved that.”
In the last decade, students have also adapted well as the industry has grown and evolved, says Hilts.
With the Saskatchewan government recently announcing expansion of coding based education in Saskatchewan schools, Hilts says this is a good investment with technological advancements not just being a “flash in the pan.”
“It’s going to be the way our economy is driven, it’s going to be the way that our lives our managed in many ways. It’s essential that we have opportunities for students to learn coding early and earlier on.”
Robotic curriculum will be offered as an elective in Saskatchewan high schools while also being available to grades 7-9 students.
And this is something that needs to be looked at on an international scale, says Hilts since many countries are ahead of Canada already in terms of keeping up with technological education.
We do not want to be left behind, he says.
