Exuberance at Gifford summer camp: 'We totally built the robot and made it work'
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Eleven-year-old Zion Williams is very creative and likes to build all types of things from scratch.
That’s why she and 70 other students in grades three through 10 spent their summer learning how to code and build robots at the Gifford Youth Achievement Center as part of the summer camp program.
“It was something really cool to do,” said Zion, who lives in Vero Beach. “We totally built the robot and made it work.”
Faizan Zaidi volunteered as an instructor at the summer camp, sharing his love of robotics with the younger kids. Faizan, or Faz as the kid’s call him, is a high school senior at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne and active on his school’s robotics team.
With Faz’s help, students worked together to design, build and code their robots to finish specific tasks.
“When I realized they didn’t have a robotics program here, I wanted to help,” said Faz. “I’ve been doing robotics competitively since the fifth grade and it’s something I really love doing. I’ve competed in robotics league competitions all over the state and I wanted the kids to learn coding and robotics during camp.”
Over the summer, the kids worked on different projects, writing code that controls the robot and tells it what to do. In the process, they used STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — principles and learned how they can be applied in the real world.
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Educators from the achievement center said the robotics and coding class was extremely well-received and they would love to bring the class back for their after-school program in the fall.
They are currently fine-tuning the details of the fall program and hope to include coding and robotics in the after-school curriculum.
Overall, the summer program was a big hit, said Stephanie Nelson, the center's marketing director.
“Summer camp was extremely successful with total enrollment peaking at 261 students in June, with nearly 70 more on a waiting list,” said Nelson. “On any given day, we could expect to see 170 to 180 students walk through our doors.”
Aside from weekly afternoon recreational activities that students engaged in like tennis, golf, rowing, swimming and skating, campers also took educational field trips to the Brevard Zoo and Kennedy Space Center. Every week ushered in new learning opportunities from lessons in healthy living to virtual classes in American history.
Campers even had a surprise visit from Chicago Dance Crash, an award-winning hip hop/contemporary dance company before their appearance at the Riverside Dance Festival.
Such varied experiences are made possible in large part due to the generosity of the Gifford Youth Achievement Center's donors and community partners, Nelson said.
The center also launched its Youth Employability Program — YEP — which paired real-life work experiences with various employers throughout the county with classroom instruction in preparation for successfully entering the workforce. The program is expected to continue throughout the coming year.
Janet Begley is a local freelance writer for TCPalm.com. If you like articles like this and other TCPalm coverage of Treasure Coast news, please support our journalism and subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Treasure Coast students learn code, build robots at GYAC camp
