Saturday April 5, 2014, the Christ Church Episcopal School Robotics Club hosted the school’s first annual technology fair. The fair, organized under the “fearless” leadership of Computer Science teacher Mr. Wayne Ryan, brought together lovers of technology from all ages in the Greenville community. Students and parents came and participated in technology based activities involving both complex engineering and fun computer games and activities.
The technology fair was spread out all over the CCES Upper School. In the drama room, an Xbox Kinect was set up with Just Dance, a popular interactive dance video game, and in the first floor commons, high school students worked together to build robots for the Robot Competition at the end of the day. Upstairs on the second floor, colleges, corporations, and professional organizations set up booths for students to learn more about pursuing a career in the technology field and to learn more about programs and opportunities for students with these interests.
Many students say one of their favorite parts of the fair was the Robotics Competition. The competition was the feature event of the fair, and drew in a large number of students. Open to newcomers with no prior robotics experience, the competition was accompanied by a building session in which students could work together to carefully follow instructions to make a fairly complex robot. The competition was a seven hour event, beginning at 1:00 and ending with a short awards ceremony at 8:00pm. The day consisted of a required training session, a building session, the competition, and most importantly, the awards ceremony.
Throughout the day, students could also attend workshops on various topics. Drew Polstra gave a twenty-five minute presentation on how to make mods for Mine Craft while David O’Brien lead two different workshops focusing on graphic design. Will Baur and Michael Ott also lead workshops. Will Baur’s workshop was on how to build your own computer, while Michael Ott’s workshopwas on how to create an iPhone app. Finishing up the day’s workshops was John Zhao, with his presentation on his own personal experience participating in a FIRST Robotics Team. The workshops covered a large range of topics and taught students a lot of new things.
The Robotics Team website says that the goal of the technology fair was “to promote the study of technology,” and many students contest that the fair did just that. The Robotics Team was impressed by the success of the fair and encourages anyone interested in joining the team to visit the website at http://robotics.cces.org/robotics/.