Nearly 100 attend summer STEAM camp

Tri-County Educational Service Center, Wayne County Schools Career Center, Schantz MakerSpace and the Wayne County Children’s STEAM PlayLab collaborated at the end of this summer to host the fourth annual Tri-County Summer STEAM camp for nearly 100 students in third grade through eighth grade at the WCSCC RAMTEC Lab.

This summer camp provided enrichment and learning opportunities for area students, focusing specifically on science, technology, engineering, art and math by leading students through a design and build of VEX IQ robotics kits. Students built a base robot vehicle and then used their knowledge and creativity to modify and enhance its functionality and appearance.

Students had opportunities to test their bot’s functionality and continually improve upon the original build. Students also installed sensors to help improve the robot’s functionality and learned basic programming to improve robot performance.

In an effort to continually improve the camp and meet the educational needs of area students, the planning group added a more rigorous camp session this year that was designed to support students with more advanced programming backgrounds. Students worked to create an automated program that controlled their VEX IQ robot to accomplish the task of picking up and stacking VEX blocks.

This year’s camp was an opportunity for students to learn and showcase their abilities. It would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of all who participated, with special thanks to Schantz MakerSpace and its volunteers, WCSCC and its RAMTEC instructor Drew Fuller, Wayne County Children’s STEAM PlayLab, and Illusions Screen Printing in Wooster, which helped to sponsor this event.