ONTARIO, Ohio — Learning can be fun–that’s what Bob Zettler, a county workforce development specialist, and a team of people with knowledge and/or experience in robotics think.
The robotics program called RAMTEC (Robotics & Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative) demonstrated how much fun it can be last Thursday at the Area Agency on Aging facility.
The group discussed an upcoming opportunity for area youth that will expose them to interactive and educational activities via the VEX robotics summer camp. The camp is open to students entering seventh through 12th grades and costs $30 to participate. It will be held at the Kehoe Center in Shelby on Aug. 3 – 5.
“In that camp, the students will be exposed to a number of things, including robotics programming, engineering design, simulation software that will reinforce the programming. And then they will be exposed to the latest [robotics] competition for this coming year,” explained Rob Smith, who works for DEPCO LLC in Ontario and serves as a RAMTEC camp staff member.
Zettler noted, “How these opportunities affect our youth who are interested in these types of things is extremely important. The sooner we can get people involved and interested in things they like to do, the better our workforce is going to look when they grow up to be adults and get into the workforce.”
Applications are available online at www.go2pioneer.com.
The hope is that by introducing students to robotics at an early age, they will get plugged into robotics programs later on down the road, one of which is offered at Pioneer Career and Technology Center.
Rob Flannery, industrial electricity instructor at Pioneer, said the school has had its own industrial electricity program since 2013. Beginning in the 2015-2016 school year, the program is expanding to incorporate RAMTEC.
Through the RAMTEC approach, the students are “gaining valuable skills while they’re still in high school as well as certifications so that when they graduate, or even before they graduate, they already have marketable skills that not only help them, but help our community,” said Flannery.
The program will be held at the Kehoe Center and is open to juniors and seniors enrolled in any of Pioneer’s 14 partner schools.
Smith provided some background information about RAMTEC, saying that it was spearheaded by Ritch Ramey of Tri-Rivers Career Center in Marion, Ohio.
There are nine RAMTEC centers in Ohio, he said.
Dylon Caudill, regional support manager for the Robotics, Education and Competition (REC) Foundation, was involved in the RAMTEC program as a student. “From there, I competed in VEX and was so involved and loved it that I got an internship and then it became my fulltime job just recently,” he said.
Aaron Smith, son of Rob Smith and a soon-to-be freshman at Lexington High School, said he’s competed in some robotics competitions already. He earned second place in state finals and almost qualified for the world championship, noting, “I think I’m going to go to worlds really soon.”
Caudill said there are over 850 teams from 33 different countries at the world robotics championship. Each year there is a new game with different challenges for the students.
To close their presentation, they powered up the robots that they created and demonstrated how they function.
“This is a different way of learning where you get to do things that you like to with subjects that you like in a way that makes learning fun as opposed to a grind,” said Zettler.
