This year, students at Chardon High School have brought back a new/old club. The robotics club has been officially formed at the high school. The adviser of the group is Mr. Ciferno.
“The Robotics Club is completely student-led,” said Mr. Ciferno, “They will decide on a design, build it, and run it at a competition.”
The goal of the club is to get students interested in engineering and manufacturing. The club is sponsored by two local businesses, Habco Tools and Hi-TechMetal Group. These groups both came to the high school hoping to help fund a robotics club. There are many other schools competing, including West Geauga, Riverside, Madison, and Harvey High school all competed last year.
“Both of our sponsors will help guide our students. The students will actually be building at the warehouses, and everything is supplied by the businesses,” replied Mr. Ciferno.
So far, because the club was officially formed on Monday, the 28th, there are no true members. Mr. Ciferno, however, said that he has already gotten about 10 applications and is hoping that there will be more. However, the members are not officially a part of the club; Mr. Ciferno would not give out the names of perspective students.
The event that the team will be working hard for is a competition on April 26 at Lakeland Community College. If they win there, the team will be able to compete at Baldwin Wallace for Nationals. The competitions are being brought to the area by AWT or Alliance for Working Together. This is the third year for the competition, and Mr. Ciferno is excited for the team’s chances.
The students will learn many different things including design, blueprint reading, tooling, fabrication, budgeting, analysis of manufacturability, adaptation to varied roles, jobs responsibilities, schedules and context, working effectively in a climate of ambiguity and changing priorities, and incorporating feedback effectively. In addition to these, thee students also will learn dealing positively with praise, setbacks and criticism, 21st Century learning skills, business literacy skills & flexibility, and adaptability skills.
These robots are not just some work-related, job-specific robots. They are actual battling machines, a lot like what you would see at a fighting competition. This is also nothing similar to the Lego Club that is in the middle school, they will use real metal and materials.
If you are interested, please see Mr. Ciferno for more details!