Basseterre, St. Kitts, June 12, 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom): The St. Kitts Nevis Robotics Association is planning a robotics camp this summer in conjunction with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.
The camp targets high school students and according to Chairman of the SKNRA, Dr. Ricardo Neil, events such as this are necessary.
“Technology is changing, the world has changed, and so to get the young people involved in what this change is, we figured, more or less, getting them at a camp would be the best option,” he said. “If you look at what is happening now in the world, technology has taken over and has changed the sphere of the world and we do not want to be left behind here in St. Kitts and Nevis.”
He said the camp will consist of various courses and many of them will give the students hand-on experience.
He said “They’ll be writing code. They’ll be solving a number of problems that we’ll be posing to them. They’ll be building robots. So a lot of engineering will actually be happening on the camp.
Dr. Neil stressed that the camp is not just for the academically inclined and everyone is invited to attend.
“It’s designed for everybody. So come as you are. So whether you are just learning about robotics or it is something that you are new to or something that you just watched on TV, you come and learn, right? So we’re advising all the parents to send your children to come,” he said.
Registration forms are available at the various high schools. The camp caters to a total of 120 students from St. Kitts and Nevis.
It runs from the 3rd to the 28th of JULY. The location of the camp will be announced a later date.
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, September 12th , 2020 (ZIZ News):The First Global Challenge continues for the St. Kitts-Nevis Robotics Association as they completed two challenges titled “School’s in Session” and “Mother Tongue”.
Team Captain for St. Kitts-Nevis Robotics Association, Sanjiv Suresh outlined the requirements for the challenges.
“Sharing is caring and that’s what the next two challenges have taught us, with the first one, challenge number 20, School’s in Session we had to teach or share some of the news skill sets that we would have learnt throughout the First Global challenge this far and some of our team mates gave some really interesting response like they said they learnt analytical skills, they learnt how to be a team player an engineer and so on,” he continued, challenge number 21 which is called Mother Tongue where we had to share some of our locally said idioms or tongue twisters in St. Kitts and Nevis and this was a really really interesting challenge.”
He also explained how these challenges relate to STEAM or STEM.
“We are teaching the others how we learn certain new skill sets and some of the skill sets we would have learnt is engineering, technological skills and so on and these all fall under STEAM or STEM and also along with that we are also teaching our own culture and how we are in St. Kitts and Nevis to the world and that’s a great thing that we are doing,” he said.
The First Global Challenge spans 13 weeks in total between 27th June and 25th September and features interactive tasks and training sessions.
The challenge is guided by the theme ‘Connecting Communities.’
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Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 20 2020 (ZIZ News): The St. Kitts Robotics Association has entered the 4th week of the First Global Challenge which is being guided by the theme ‘Connecting Communities.’
This season of the first global challenge will span 13 weeks in total between 27th June and 25th September and features interactive tasks and training sessions.
Since the beginning of the competition, the St. Kitts team has been participating in weekly sessions with the aim of capturing the top spot in September.
Team Captain for the First Global Challenge Sanjiv Suresh outlined what is expected of the team during the competition.
“This year, as it is a technical challenge, we are supposed to make videos and photos of every document that we would create, as well as more challenges that come along, we have to keep completing them by doing different videos. In that part, every member—we have 30 members on the team—so each member needs to complete their role so I am also the video editor for the team so I make sure that they complete their part, recording their part of the video and I compile them to make an outstanding video in the end,” he said.
Team member Hadassah Cuffy spoke of the significance of STEM and the advantages gained from participating in this event.
To me STEM involves a lot of critical thinking about the sciences and about the individual subjects like math and engineering and we are more inclined to play hand in hand in innovation and recreate more things and better products,: she said.
“It’s helping me a lot especially with team work, collaboration and it’s opening my eyes to the sense of robotics and technology so I’m learning a lot in those areas.”
Dr, Ricardo Neil who is the founder of the St. Kitts Robotics Association said the competition has been going well for the 30 participants that make up the St. Kitts team.
“It has been good so far. It has been exciting so far to have these meetings to have the students actually rallying which is one of the most important factors where they are able to rally together and create all of these things that we are doing. We are hoping to win this year so we are working hard to make sure that particular thing happens.”
The First Global Challenge also features Stem talks and interviews as well as technical training sessions to give first-hand insight on topics related to assembling a robot and their parts. Free online educational resources have also been provided to youth participating in the challenge to increase their knowledge on the many aspects of robotics such as coding, 3D modelling and general knowledge in the fields of STEM.
This is the 4th year St. Kitts and Nevis has participated within the First Global Challenge.
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