Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette This robot, still under construction, sits on the competition field. The robots must be coded to pick up the blocks on the field and drop them into the box on the right, called a score zone.

HANCOCK — Barkell Elementary School is preparing to host its first-ever VEX Robotics competitions, said Genevieve Nordmark, Barkell’s elementary STEM teacher and VEX IQ Robotics coach. The competition is scheduled for Sat. Nov. 4 at the Hancock High School gymnasium, at noon. Nordmark said other schools are welcome to attend the event in addition to the public.

“This is our second year having elementary robotics teams,” Nordmark said. “We only had one team last year, because we started our team in January, and we had to compete at the end of January in order to fulfill the grant cycles.”

The team had to travel downstate for the competition. Out of the 30 teams present, Barkell’s placed 21st overall, and placed 11th in Skills.

“Skills is just individual driving and coding,” she said.

This year Barkell will be hosting a series of four competitions for the elementary/ middle school robotics, which is called VEX IQ.

According to VEX Robotics, VEX IQ is based on plastic, snap-together pieces specifically designed to build highly functional robots. This system doesn’t require any prior knowledge in robotics.

Nordmark said this year Barkell has 19 students divided into four teams, one of which is composed of all girls. Nordmark said she has a lot of girls on all teams, and Barkell is the only elementary school in the area with elementary robotics teams. Because there are no other elementary school teams, the Barkell teams, and the one middle school team, will have to compete against each other.

“We’re hoping other schools will join,” she said, “because it’s not as fun if we’re only competing against ourselves.”

The contest involves a competition field, which is a large table. There are three score zones in different corners. The teams must design and construct a robot that is capable of picking the blocks up and move them to one of the corners containing a score zone. There are blocks of various sizes, and the robots must not only carry the blocks but lift them and drop them into the score zone in order to score points.

Building a robot is not the only step involved in the process. The robots must be programmed to know what to do, which Nordmark said requires the students have some knowledge in coding.

Coding, a field of computer programming, is a set of instructions that a robot can interpret and follow. Robotics is the application of electronics, mechanics, and programming tools to program robots to do certain tasks. Robotics is a popular way to introduce students to STEM-based learning at an early age.

The students are learning on many levels, Nordmark said. It is not only the computer science and the coding, along with the teamwork they are doing. It is also having to problem-solve through different situations and challenges, and resolve them on their own. Although she is the coach, Nordmark is not allowed to help them in any way.

“I’m here to provide them the resources and give them the time, and show them the places they can research how to do things,” said Nordmark, “but I don’t know how to build these robots.”