S.E.T. Update

By Mary Lamare

The eighth grade Science, Engineering and Technology class has been building and programming robots this trimester. In late October the students were suddenly attacked by a pair of cackling robotic witches. Fortunately, our students were able to quickly counter the attack with their own army of robots, which were able to first speak to the witches, then circle around them and finally push the walking witches backwards. Way to go, GSA robots!

Seventh grade has been very successful at creating stories using the Java-based Alice program. Most of the "cartoons" contain plots revolving around surprise interactions between girls, boys and dogs. The class discovered how to record and add sound bites, so we have lots of acting on top of the programming. While this has been a very fun class, it has also been frustrating: the program crashes at least once every hour, so learning to push the 'save' key every few minutes is critical!

In fifth grade we have been doing a variety of small engineering projects, including making solar ovens, building balsa wood bridges (introducing cross bracing), creating paper towers, and, through the magic of DVD, exploring career options in various engineering fields.