“Yay,” roared Joe Barlow, his baritone filling the classroom.
The silver-haired instructor was easily the most excited person in a class filled with about a dozen 8- to 12-year-old boys when a group of the kids were able to program a robot to complete a task.
“That’s tremendous,” Barlow said. “We have a bunch of awesome brains in here.”
Barlow started a Robotics Class through the Career and Technical Education department at Great Falls College this summer to lay down a foundation of basic coding and programming skills in a team setting. They meet twice a week through July 2 and program the robots to complete various tasks.
It’s a high energy, fun environment.
Caleb Cyr, an 11-year-old who attends Foothills Community Christian School, is enjoying the class.
“It’s fun,” he said. “Building the robots, programming and making the skeletons.”
Next up for the class will be programming the robots to sumo wrestle.
Barlow went through the various components the student’s could use to help the robots identify the opponent and the white line that forms the ring, and the class discussed the potential tools they could give their robots to get an advantage.
“We are building all of these robots and programming them,” said Henry Hunt, an 11-year-old home-schooled student. “It’s teaching us problem-solving.”
Barlow also has been teaching a robotics class with Great Falls Central Catholic students.
He is hoping to build up the skills and enthusiasm of the students to form a robotics competition team, and he has been getting help and advice from Chuck Merja, who coaches a robotics team out in Sun River that has won the world championship three times.
“I want to get to the point that we are able to get out and compete successfully in the FIRST Lego League Open Championships,” Barlow said. “We’ll blow them away.”
Barlow was surprised to see that all of the children who signed up were boys. He asked several girls who saw the fun and asked them to join. When they declined his offer, he asked if they would be interested if it was an all-girls class. Their eyes lit up.
So, he plans to offer more classes when this wraps up and plans on offering an all-girls class to break the ice for them.
Reach out to the Continuing Education and Training department at Great Falls College at [email protected] or 406-268-3734 to learn more about the class and when it will be offered again.