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Co-Lin instructor plans robotics camp
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| By: SCOTT TYNES, DAILY LEADER Staff Writer |
June 01, 2009 |
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WESSON - "Terminator: Salvation" may be scoring at the box office, but a Copiah-Lincoln Community College physics instructor hopes to be a bigger hit with his summer robotics camp for young students.
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Dr. Kevin McKone will host the first Robotics and Space Exploration Camp on the Co-Lin campus and Rainwater Observatory and Planetarium in French Camp from June 15-19 for students enrolling in grades 5-7. There is a fee to attend the camp and space is limited to the first 20 enrollees.
"This is a good hands-on approach to get them interested in science," he said. "I just don't see that these kids are getting exposed to science in school."
McKone said much of the early-grade science is textbook-driven and that did not attract children to science like getting them physically and mentally involved with experiments and demonstrations. A large part of that, he said, is because of the cost of facilities and materials.
That is where the community college can step in and assist, he said.
The college's laboratories and other facilities are not in use during the summer break and provide an appropriate setting to host science-based camps.
"I think the community college is a perfect venue for this," McKone said. "We can get them interested in science at an early age and hopefully encourage them to come to Co-Lin in the future."
Children attending the camp will learn the basics of robot design and programming during the first two days of camps and even begin constructing their first robot.
The third day of camp will feature competitions pitting each team against each other.
The competitions are varied. For example, one competition would evaluate how well each robot interprets instructions while another may judge how well the robot can manage a task.
McKone said the camp will use Lego's Mindstorms NXT line of robotics toys during the camp. The NXT line is the third generation of Mindstorms toys, which use Lego blocks to build the robots.
"There's kind of a cult following with these things," he said. "Some of things people have done with them is just amazing. I'm just scratching the surface. We're all still learning about what these can do."
Michael McCullough, an engineering major from Brookhaven, and Patrick Lambert, a mathematics major from West Lincoln, will be assisting McKone as instructors. They have both finished two years at Co-Lin and were taught by McKone.
Camp attendees will travel to French Camp June 18 and stay overnight at the Rainwater facility, where they will use 16 telescopes to study the constellations. Rainwater recently began operating a research-grade robotics telescope.
"I think the kids will thoroughly enjoy it," McKone said. "Hopefully, this will be something that will go from year to year."
Other science teachers have expressed their desire in possibly adding a week to the camp if it is held again, he said. They would like to either expand to include life sciences, such as fauna and flora, or even hold a second camp.
For more information or to register for the camp, call McKone at (601) 643-8450 or (601) 695-1445.
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©The Daily Leader 2009
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