STUDENTS from Cockshut Hill School, took part in a Computer Science STEM Day this term with the Smallpeice Trust and Amazon Web Services and were set the challenge to build an autonomous vehicle.
The Smallpeice Trust is an educational charity that inspires young people to pursue careers in science and engineering through events and workshops.
For over 50 years, they have been giving young people everything they need to fuel their passion for engineering.
The Cockshut Hill learners got to build their own vehicle using Lego Mindstorms, adding the computer components and then using iPads to create coding and programming their car to navigate and drive itself without any human interaction.
Participants were able to earn employability skills badges throughout the day and they learnt how they can transfer these skills into future employment settings.
The STEM Day also allowed learners to obtain the BSA Discovery Crest Award, which means all participating students will receive a CREST Discovery Award in exchange for some written reflective exercises.
Two Year 9 girls, Hanfa and Emily won first prize for being able to get their robots to navigate quite a complicated track.
The school has secured some next generation Lego sets for the New Year and learners will carry on working to build more sophisticated robots.
Jason Bridges, principal at Cockshut Hill Said: “I want to say a big thank you to The Smallpeice Trust and Amazon for coming along to Cockshut Hill.
‘The STEM day was absolutely brilliant, I know our learners loved building their robots and it was great to see them building skill sets that will serve them so well in the future.”
