Genevieve DiNatale @cnb_DiNatale

CRESTVIEW The 6th annual Ed-Spark STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Lego Robotics Camp kicked off Monday at Shoal River Middle School.

Right now they are working on building a basic EV3 Tribot configuration. Its standard with all the Lego Mindstorms, and basically this is just to help them learn how to build and get used to the programming so when we give them challenges later this week they will be able to complete those efficiently, said Jacob Thursby, a 17-year-old camp mentor and rising senior at Niceville High School.

I went to this camp last year because I just have a fascination about robots, so my mom thought it would be a good idea to see how it is and thats how I met my coach, Ms. Allen, 12-year-old Marysia Ray said while building a robot with classmate Taylor Smith.

After building their robots, campers hooked them to a computer using Bluetooth or programming cords.

They are going to build a Lego robot and they will use the programming from the computer and it will download onto the robot and the robot will work autonomously, said Laurie Allen, the camps co-founder and a teacher at Shoal River Middle School.

Tim Sexton is a STEM teacher at Davidson Middle School who began the program with Allen after meeting her at the science center about six years ago.

I really enjoyed playing sorry, I mean working with the Legos and wanted to start something new and we wanted to build a robotics program (at) the north end of the county and to do so we started this camp, Sexton said

He said the skills middle school students develop at the camp are manifold.

One is teamwork. They have to work with a person they probably never met before, and to work as a team to accomplish whatever given tasks after the robot is built," he said. "It also teaches them to modify and troubleshoot their robots when something isnt working right, so there is some troubleshooting and engineering skills, (such as) building attachments that would work for emissions."

Read more:

Crestview students learn robotics at STEM summer camp - The Northwest Florida Daily News