By JOHN DAHLIA
The Fairmont News
FAIRMONT, W.Va. — While delivering a giant cargo van full of robotic tournament equipment to a school in Monongalia County, Todd Ensign takes a moment to return a phone call.
(Photo by John Dahlia)
He’s always busy — and for good reason. Ensign and his team manage 12 robotics competitions, which includes running and hosting 20 tournaments at 15 locations across the state.
“I was warned when I was asked to help run and manage the state’s robotics six years ago,” Ensign said, “‘Be careful, Todd, robotics will take over your life.’”
“It’s gotten to the point where the demand is incredible,” Ensign said. “But now, in our third year, it’s our biggest effort thus far.”
The effort is made possible mainly from a group of partners including the NASA IV&V Educator Resource Center, NASA WV Space Grant Consortium and Mountaineer Area Robotics 2614.
“Through the partners, we were able to double our staff this year and support more kids at our camps,” he said.
The robotic camps will take place at five locations beginning at James Rumsey Technical Institute in Martinsburg the week of June 5-9. Other camp dates and locations are: June 12-16 at Mountaineer Middle School in Morgantown; June 19-23 at Fairmont State University in Fairmont; June 26-30 at the Robert C Byrd Institute in Huntington; and July 17-21 at the WV State Extension NASA SEMAA Lab in Beckley. There will be a state tournament July 28 at BridgeValley Community and Technical College in South Charleston.
Ensign said the team-based program will be centered around learning to build, document and program the LEGO Mindstorm/EV3 robot and ultimately compete in the World Robot Olympiad.
“This is the first time we’ve been involved with the World Robot Olympiad,” he said.
World Robot Olympiad (WRO) is an international robot competition that brings together young people from all over the world to develop their creativity, design and problem-solving skills through challenging and educational robot competitions and activities.
“We’ll be able to send two teams from each camp to the WRO national tournament in September at North Carolina State University,” he said.
Teams of two and three students can register together for the camp. Individual students (or pairs) will be combined into teams of three. The intent, Ensign said, is for students who are new to LEGO Robotics or who are on existing FIRST LEGO League teams to form themselves into smaller groups, so they can develop their technical and teamwork skills, while competing in the new WRO tournament series.
“We’re going to pair three kids together,” Ensign said, “and run the five-day camps.”
The schedule is fairly simple, he said. The first four days will be focused on training and building and the fifth day will be the tournament.
“Teams competing will walk in with parts and have two-and-a-half hours to build a robot,” he said.
“We’ll be giving out awards at the end of each week to the winning teams,” Ensign said.
Registration is open now and will remain open until each of the five camps are filled up. Anyone interested in registering can do so by contacting Annelise Williams at 304-367-8215 or email at [email protected].
The popularity of robotics across the state has grown almost at an exponential level.
Since 2011 the number of teams has jumped from 75 to more than 250 today. Those teams include myriad robotics initiatives, including FIRST LEGO® League Jr., FIRST LEGO® League, FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST Robotics Competition, VEX IQ, VEX Robotics Competition, Vex U, Skills USA and Zero Robotics.
Ensign said while competitions like FIRST LEGO League are fun for the teams, they also help instill ideals and a passion for STEM learning, which could lead to more students entering STEM fields and more young people staying in state for work.
“West Virginia faces an uncertain economic future if we do not adapt our business sector to focus more on high-technology industries,” Ensign said. “Our students are currently not adequately prepared to engage in the high-tech job sector and are leaving our state for opportunities elsewhere. We need to empower our educators to provide the necessary career, STEM and 21st century skill training to our students in order to counter these trends and entice businesses to our state.”
If students get interested in things like robotics at an early age, Ensign said they might hold that interest throughout their school years, eventually applying for a STEM-related job and boosting the state’s workforce, making for a smarter, stronger West Virginia.
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