Spartan Treasures
The First Edition of Spartaneous
STEWARD NEWS
EVERYDAY INNOVATIONS :
Lower School Robotics Club
Robots aren ’ t all silver men made of metal with red flashing eyes . When you go to the grocery store and the doors magically open for you , that ’ s an example of robotics at work using the basic characteristics found in all robots , including sensors , inputs , processing , and outputs .
Through the Lower School Enrichment Program , 16 students in grades 3-5 experienced robotics programming of this caliber in the Lower School Robotics Club during the fall 2016 semester .
Led by JK-12 Technology Coordinator Robin Ricketts , students participated in one session a week after school in which they were paired together and became familiar with a robot using
LEGO ® Mind Storms EV3 . Students familiarized themselves with the EV3 programming language on their iPads and connected to the robots through Bluetooth . They then wrote programs on the iPads and sent the programs to the robots to execute . These programs included sounds , motion , speed , and turning their wheels the correct way to navigate through a maze . Some students programmed the robots to sense color , touch , and distance and respond with certain outputs .
This semester , participating students in grades 4-5 will be working with LEGO ® Mind Storms EV3 , while students in grades 1-3 will practice robotics with LEGO ® WeDo 2.0 , Kinderlab Robotics ’
KIBO , and Learning Essentials ’ Code and Go™ Programmable Robotic Mouse .
Through the Lower School Enrichment Program , two different levels of robotics will be offered : an introductory level for grades 1-3 and a more advanced level for grades 4-5 .
“ Robotics is the physical expression of programming ,” Mrs . Ricketts said . “ Both robotics and programming require computational thinking and problem solving . There are so many parts of our lives affected by programming and robotics in some form that I think we would be doing our children a disservice by not exposing them to it .”
Spartan Treasures
The First Edition of Spartaneous
Long before this edition of The Colonnade , Spartaneous was the first “ magazine ” Steward produced . During the school ’ s first eight years , copies of a basic newsletter were typed and run off on a duplicating machine , according to Paul Cramer ’ s A Story of Success : A History of The Steward School . Sometimes the copies came out black and white as they were supposed to , but sometimes they came out purple !
In the fall of 1980 , Steward parents Mary Byrd and Jack Lewis created Spartaneous . Featuring blue print on white paper ( sometimes on gold ), the publication was printed using a quality printing machine , looking “ much more respectable and surely enhanced the writing of the various articles submitted by faculty and parents ” ( Cramer 103 ).
Check out the cover of the first edition of Spartaneous !
The Colonnade | 9