Dawgma Fuels Robotics Education in Lower Merion School District
Beginning as a FIRST Robotics Competition team (FRC), Dawgma officially became part of Lower Merion High School’s Technology & Engineering Club in the fall of 2005. Since then the team has been the impetus behind the co-curricular and curricular infusion of robotics and STEM outreach throughout the district and beyond.
Situated in Ardmore, PA, Dawgma now competes in both FRC and the VEX Robotics Competition as well. The team has earned an impressive total of eleven awards in just four years of competition, and has earned at least one award at every regional event it has competed in to date. Impressively, awards have come for design, on field play, outreach, and more signifying a well-rounded team. Along the way we’ve developed relationships with local businesses, philanthropic organizations, Lockheed Martin, and even NASA – all in the effort to sustain financially and grow technically.
More important, however, has been Dawgma’s STEM influence throughout the school district. Now entering just it’s fifth full year the team has placed 92% of its graduates in STEM-related university programs, and team members have also produced several individual senior graduation projects involving robotics as their capstone high school experience. Faculty members who run the team also developed a robotics technology education course, Innovation & Invention, which is taught in both district high schools and utilizes the VEX Robotics Design System. Recognizing the excitement of learning through robotics, a VEX Robotics unit has also been added to an entry level Tech Ed course in both high schools as well. Beyond the Tech Ed coursework in robotics, Dawgma leadership has also provided robotics training for middle school gifted staff and as a result, autonomous robotics is part of the 6th grade gifted curriculum.
Growing along with these robotics curriculum efforts has been our STEM outreach program known as “Portable Inspiration.” The flexible outreach package includes hands on robotics activities, demos, learning stations, and is also part of our Jr. FLL Expo that is run by student Dawgma members, where teams of 6-9 year old students complete a LEGO themed project each year. From these outreach efforts, we’ve taken STEM to our special needs population and thousands of younger students in our community and beyond. These efforts have spawned an Eagle Scout Project, an elementary school science club, dozens of community-based LEGO teams, and one high school robotics club in a nearby district and we’ve only just begun. Outreach creates win-win scenarios for everyone involved. The elementary and middle school student participants are provided with an opportunity to be excited about Science and Technology and learn through hands-on activities. The high school students involved get placed in real role-model mentoring situations and develop leadership and organizational skills to compliment their developing technical aptitudes.
Whether it’s competitive robotics teams, robotics curriculum, or STEM outreach, Dawgma’s evolution has been feeding the STEM revolution since its inception and shows no signs of slowing down. Please come visit our team website to learn more: http://dawgma.lmtechclub.org . I think one of our middle school gifted teachers summed it up best when she wrote, “[We are] breeding a whole new generation of kids who are finding out they are interested and even talented in this area of study and considering careers in engineering and technology when they never thought they would have! It is really exciting!”
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