Seacoast Online, October 13, 2011, by David Ramsey - SOUTH BERWICK — It's after three o'clock at Marshwood Great Works School, and the fifth-graders in Grace Jacobs' robotics club are huddled around laptops in groups of two and three, chatting noisily as they meet the day's challenge of making their robots move.
They've just received programming instructions from volunteer Dave Whelan, who works for a U.S. Navy division that deals with submarine maintenance and modernization at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
"We have a 10-week program and we're trying to get the kids excited about engineering and technology through the use of Lego Mindstorms robotics," Whelan said, referring to special robotics kits made through partnerships with the toy maker. "This was part of a grant from the Marshwood Education Foundation from this spring."
There are 14 students in the session, and the hope is that the club will attract another fifth-grade session and one fourth-grade session for a total of 36 students during the year, Whelan added.
"In the first two weeks, we built the robots, and we're getting into programming now," he said. "In the last five weeks, we'll focus on more interesting engineering challenges."
When the programming starts and the robots move, Whelan said, "That's when it gets exciting."
Jacobs said the robotics club is "pretty appealing to kids because it's so exciting to have something happen because they programmed (it).
"You're really introducing computer programming and getting them to think about what that means, but they get to play with something, see it come alive," she said.
When the kids come into the classroom, they know immediately what to do because they are so familiar with building with Lego sets at home, she added.
"They just did a basic practice ...; teaching (their robots) to spin for 10 seconds and then to stop; they download that to their robot, and their robot does that — and they're just delighted," she said.
Her dream is that children will continue with robotics throughout their schooling.
"The high school competitions are incredible," she said.
Students Nathan Kiesman, Elizah D'Aran and Devin Mahoney were intently troubleshooting their robot after downloading the new program.
"Why is the arm going, instead of the other motor? I reconnected the motor," Kiesman said.
Team member D'Aran corrected him.
"No, you didn't," she said. "This is A and this is C."
That resolved a mix-up of wire connections that had led to the problem.
As Jacobs suggested, most of the students seemed to be familiar with Legos.
Mahoney said, "I like building Legos and I love programming stuff on computers, and this is a little bit of both."
Kiesman said he liked the programing much more than the building of the robot.
D'Aran, who said she does a lot of programming at home, said the building is more fun.
Bella Trull, another student in the robotics club, said she likes playing with both the Legos and the computers, "and how we are connecting things and figuring out things."
