On Saturday, January 25,  Rockenbaugh Elementary School’s Robotics Club sent four teams to participate in the TCEA Area Inventions Contest. The teams included the following: “GSSH,” “Neat Freak,” “Team Sneeze,” and “Top Chef.”

The “Neat Freak” team won second place by creating a robot that will clean a room and has qualified to represent Rockenbaugh at the state contest at Deer Park High School in Houston. All teams developed and demonstrated critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving skills along with other 21st century skills such as creativity, imagination, curiosity, and innovation.

“These Rockenbaugh students have shown growth using this robotics program,” said coach Cindy Featherston, RES Gifted Specialist.  “We are really proud of our team and their accomplishments.”

• Team Top Chef – Angeli Patel, Natalie Sanders, Jordan McConnell, Anna Villarreal
• Team Sneeze – Brett Belleville, Charlie O’Bryan, Carson Lawrence, Hutton Seltzer
• Team GSSH – Justin Sasek, David Guess, Ryan Strange, Alfred Hale
• Team Neat Freak – Clark Hindman, Aurora Tong, Jack Clark, Eri Pilon

The Inventions Contest is an open-ended contest. Teams consist of two to four students. They create and develop a robotic invention to demonstrate a solution for a problem of their choice. The teams showcase research, robot performance, robot design, marketing, and presentation skills for judges at the TCEA area contests. Students approach their problem as a real team of engineers working together to solve their problem using the Engineering Design Process. Students in grade levels 4-8 competed in the Intermediate level competition.

A video to celebrate the students achievement is posted below:

RES Robotics -TCEA Inventions Contest 2013-14 from Cynthia Featherston on Vimeo.