Empowering Minds Roboshow

The 12th Annual Empowering Minds Roboshow took place recently at St Patrick's College. Schools from Laois, Kilkenny, Dublin and Galway were in attendance. 

The projects developed by the children and their teachers were very varied and extremely interesting. Themes included the Industrial Revolution, working models of the Ballymun flats, and the Portumna canal locks. In addition the boys from Brunswick Street had designed a Maths Challenge game which required them to calculate and perform “on the spot” programming to get their vehicles to travel specified distances as set by the “challenger”.

We also had a new development this year where a school from Kilkenny that couldn't be present linked up with a school that were in attendance to play an online version of a Maths strategy game they had jointly developed.

An exciting first time visitor to the Roboshow was Damian Hernandez. Only 2 weeks before the Roboshow he had climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania for charity. During their expedition schools across the country were able to follow the progress of Damian and the rest of his team virtually in real time through 20 minute GPS updates via a device they were carrying with them. The team also gave daily updates on their progress via blog entries on a blog belonging to one of the Empowering Minds schools.  Trek climb entries including images of the school mascots that climbed the mountain too can be seen at www.holyspiritbns.scoilnet.ie/blog!

Damian spent the afternoon talking to the children who had followed his adventure and had sent in questions to him. He brought along some of the equipment they used and showed some spectacular photos of the trip.

 

Last Updated: Wednesday July 07 2010