What did your kids work on if you don’t mind sharing? Or, what was the coolest project you saw? I realize they could be one and the same. ;)[/quote]
Obviously the robot building and programming was cool. The did decent in that. Truthfully because no team scored very high. (400 points possible, highest score of all teams was less than 300 I think.)
The research project theme this year was bioengineering. My son’s team far surpassed what any of us parents expected. Maybe because they were 9 and haven’t been hampered with conventional thinking yet… – they pulled completely disparate ideas (reprogramming bacteria, using progenitor cells to culture skin faster, using laminin to culture skin faster, spray on skin instead of grafts)… I’m truly stunned at what they came up with.
– reprogram bacteria to produce laminin (a protien)
– extract the keratinocyte progenitor cells from a donor sample (epidermis stem cells, I guess.)
– grow skin for skin grafts faster.
Other projects were equally cool and impressive… There was bioengineering to regrow cartilege in knees. Some brain research. Intelligent wheelchairs. Bionic eyes, limbs, etc… (I can’t recite the details as well with those since I just got the jist from poster boards. I learned a lot more about my son’s teams work since I saw the presentation, had to nag him to do the research, etc.)
I was REALLY impressed with some of the robot designs, too. The kids got lots of ideas for next year’s challenge. Lots of interesting ways to solve the problems.
I love the concept of this program – hook the kids with robotics and sneak in science, teamwork, research, etc. It worked with my son… he would NEVER have put in the science research if there hadn’t been the lure of robots. LOL.
