AUGUSTA, Maine — Building a robot that rebounds basketballs is no small task, but for 15-year-old Dakota Condon and her friends from Messalonskee High School, it was all in good fun.
The school’s Infinite Loop Robotics team isn’t part of any class, and the students receive nothing in return for their dedication other than the fulfilling nature of problem-solving and the personal satisfaction of seeing the results of their hard work actually function.
“I loved so much about working with the machinery,” Condon said as the mobile rebounding machine sucked up basketballs and lobbed them to folks in the crowd. “It also serves as a great incentive to keep up with your schoolwork. If you fail a quarter, you can’t be on the team.”
The merits of STEM education — which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — have been widely touted in recent years as businesses and governments struggle to keep up with an increasingly technology-driven world, and Maine is no exception. Gov. Paul LePage and Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen promote STEM education aggressively as part of their education reform ideas, which were spelled out explicitly earlier this year in a strategic plan released by the Department of Education.
Condon and dozens of other students from Jay, Farmington, Oakland and Falmouth gathered with LePage and Bowen Tuesday in the State House to demonstrate their robots and tout the merits of STEM education. LePage, in turn, presented the first-ever Governor’s Promising STEM Youth Awards.
According to Condon, her team’s biggest challenges didn’t come during the design and building stages, but later during troubleshooting. With a regional robotics competition in Boston just hours away, the team found itself using frantic tune-up time to rebuild major parts of their machine. In the competition, it worked.
“It was a great confidence booster,” Condon said. “Going through that sort of thing is just good for you.”
LePage agreed that teamwork and problem solving were two valuable side effects of the robotics projects undertaken by the students.
“Beyond just STEM, you are proving something else to yourselves: that you’re able to work in a group and you’re able to share knowledge,” LePage said to the students. “By sharing the knowledge that each of you brings to the table, you become profoundly strong as a unit. That’s what’s going to make you so powerful and successful as you move forward.”
LePage stressed that technical skills and anyone who has them will be top-tier contributors to the future economy.
“You’re the people who are going to build our bridges, design our buildings, solve our energy needs and run our computer networks,” he said. “You are the future of this state, make no mistake about that. You will be moving our state forward.”
George Hogan, vice president of Wright Express, a technology-driven firm in South Portland, agreed.
“These are exactly the types of skills that will drive our country and businesses to the next level as we compete globally,” Hogan said. “Today, virtually every country in the world is trying to reinvent themselves. … They’re using technology to reinvent themselves every five years. The STEM disciplines play a huge role in that endeavor.”
LePage presented awards to three robotics teams who participated in the FIRST Robotics World Championships in St. Louis two months ago. The teams included the “SMART” robotics team from Spruce Mountain High School in Jay; the “Sunnyside Up” team from elementary and middle schools in the Farmington area; and the “Infinite Loop” team from Messalonskee High School in Oakland. Teams from Mount Desert Island and South Portland also participated in the competitions, but were unable to attend Tuesday’s ceremonies.
Other honorees included Taylor Rogers of Dixmont and Ma Wei Feng of Portland, who will participate in the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia this summer; and “The Paper Planes,” a Falmouth High School team who in April competed in the Real World Design Challenge in Washington, D.C.
Some of the students at the State House Tuesday said they fully intend to pursue STEM careers. Some of them indicated they might put their educations to use here in Maine. Nick Ferguson of Sidney and Derek Caron of Oakland, both seniors at Messalonskee High School in Oakland, said they intend to study chemical engineering and computer engineering, respectively, at the University of Maine.
“STEM is important to me personally because I really want a greener Earth,” Ferguson said. “I want to go into renewable energy and help society invest in new types of energy.”
Caron said he wants to someday design medical robotics systems, though they’ll have to be far more precise than the basketball rebounder he helped design this year.
“The experience I got from this is something that can follow me for a long time,” he said. “If you’d talked to me in middle school, I never thought I’d do anything like this. We built a robot from the ground up. With this stuff, your mind is the only limit.”
Just an FYI to the Bangor School Department – If Penguin plans to show up at my child’s school for anything, I’d like advance notice so that I can have my kids home that day.
Really? Isn’t it best to know thine enemy?
I hear ya, we certainly wouldn’t want LePage pointing out that your kids have a future and potential, they’re much better off learning the finer points of bigotry, racism, and ignorance from emotional, reactionary parents such as yourself.
Do you even know the definition of bigotry? It fits LePage to a tee.
Really? Explain please!
I don’t think he has an explaination at all! lol So glad you called him on that. I am so sick of these people that whine no matter what Lepage does. Go Paul! I am behind you 100%
How about the verbal slap in the face he gave the NAACP, or vetoing teacher’s raises because their union supported gay marriage? He seems to have nothing but contempt for the poor.
He just doesn’t want his kid beat up for his lunch money!
Liberals are the biggest penguins I’ve ever heard of ,wah, wah, wah! You talk big behind your pathetic hidden e-mail jargon. We had to put up with your spineless Governor for 8 years.I love reading about your bleeding hearts ,lol. Go buy some tissues,lol.
You can’t hide your children from reality. Someday, you will learn that they will be who they wan’t to be, instead of being controlled by paranoia.
Hide them anywhere you can!
Lepage, the halloween candy thief is in town!
If you can’t support someone for doing the right thing, or at least have the common sense to remain silent then the problem is you.
He does something good for the State and you want to be ignorant? I bet if there were Democrats coming the school you would be there with open arms! You truly are a joke and a disgrace to the Bangor community!
What does LePage know about STEM?
Nothing.
Yessah
He is just there casing the joint looking for kids to swab the floors so he can layoff them Union Janitors!
None of us can praise the Governor enough for getting himself out and into the classroom to interact one-on-one with the kids. Kids have an uncanny way of saying things that can enlighten the cloistered and the ideological in one felling swoop.
I would further recommend Governor LePage do more of this, more thoroughly, enough so he is not led around by principals who only let him brush up against those students who are most likely to tow the line of achievement in education.
Education is not all about achievement. A lot of education is about unfit teachers who are mindlessly crapping all over the students and ruining their futures one student at a time, generation after generation.
That is -after all- why so many Maine parents home school their kids.
In other words, if what Governor LePage sampled today, were the norm, Maine would not have the problem it has in its schools.
Agreed. Such awards are a simple way to demonstrate importance of the learning.
I wonder who paid for those robot kits? Our middle school can’t even afford the small Lego ones.
….
Sure he does. Look at his staff.
Take a good look at those there robots kids!
If you are smart enough to invent them the companies supporting Lepage will be glad to employ you long enough to steal your idea , and if you are not, take a good look at your replacement worker in the factory!
It’s hard to believe that LePage actually supports science education. The Tea Party has repeatedly attacked science and scientists for pointing out the impact of the corporate “profit first, nothing else matters” attitude.
Stem is a good program. Maybe Lepage will come to appreciate the students when he meets them and sees them achievingtheir goals.
Great story! Looks good for Maine’s future!
Too bad these comments are all negative about LePage. How about some hearty “Congratulations” for what these kids accomplished?! Two of these teams are high schoolers from rural areas, and they won the chance to compete at the World Robotics Competition, and did extremely well for our State. For the Jay team, this was their ROOKIE season! For the Oakland kids, they finished 3rd in their division of 100 teams, and 12th overall out of 400 from all around the world. THAT’S why these kids were invited to meet the governor. Regardless what you opinion is of him, please be considerate enough to acknowledge the work these kids put in, and the benefits they received! For all you adults who just complain about the lack of educational opportunities in this state, try working with the youth and making a difference. I know I do.
“Gov. Paul LePage and Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen promote STEM education aggressively as part of their education reform ideas, which were spelled out explicitly earlier this year in a strategic plan released by the Department of Education.”
Mr. Cousins, I can’t find any such thing in either of those links…… The link says that the governor argued that you have to grab kids’ interest when they are young. The link from that article is Bowen arguing that low test scores are justification for his reform plans.
And, the strategic plan says, essentially: no money, more accountability, more integration, more technology.