Southside students claim Mars Rover honors

SANDPOINT — Southside Elementary teams completed the Idaho TECH Mars Rover Challenge last week, bringing home a number of awards.

In addition to nine awards between the two teams, the sixth-grade “Space Pigs” team was named first place overall, and the fifth-grade “Space Farmers” took second overall.

“I was really proud of them,” said Karin Beno, Southside’s Title I teacher. “I was very impressed. They were good ambassadors for Southside — they conducted themselves well.”

For the Mars Rover Challenge, Sponsored by the NASA Idaho Space Grant Consortium, students work in teams to design and construct Mars Rover models out of Lego and non-Lego components. The remote-controlled models are then put to the test during the Idaho TECH Engineering Design Competition. For the local teams, the challenge is held in Moscow. It is typically held at the University of Idaho, though this year it was at Moscow’s 1912 Center.

Southside has participated in the challenge since 2006 and it is an integral part of the school’s STEAM program, Beno said. The focus of the program, which culminates in the competition, is on connecting students to NASA’s Moon and Mars missions, providing students with opportunities to engage in engineering-based, hands-on learning experiences, and promoting future careers in space exploration and engineering via connections to the University of Idaho and Idaho State University.

While the challenge is open to students in grades four through six, Southside teams are made up of fifth- and sixth-grade students. To get started, the kids apply for “job” in the fall and those who get through the application process are assigned a position on the team. On this year’s sixth-grade team, Dalton Williams and Keefe Shockey were the engineers, Andrew Lehman did the PowerPoint, pie charts and timeline, and Austin Whitmore did the poster, budgets and cover design. For the fifth-grade team, Clayton Newsome and Kirk Thornock were the engineers, Thane Murphy was a backup engineer, and Rylee Vernon and Makenzi Norris worked together on the PowerPoint, poster, pie charts.

While they each had their jobs, they worked together throughout the project.

Teams are provided basic Lego kits and the Mars Rover Design Challenge manual by Idaho Tech. The kids were required to adhere to limited budgets, timelines, and restricted additional Lego parts throughout the process.

The Mars Rover Challenge requires teams to complete nine tasks that promote employable STEAM-based skills. The tasks include critical thinking and problem solving; creativity and innovation — brainstorming new ideas; teamwork and collaboration — working together to achieve the goals of the mission, as well as conflict resolution; oral communication and public speaking with their PowerPoint presentation; written communication — lab notebook, data records and technical reports; computer technology — multiple software programs such as Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Photoshop; graphic arts and design — posters, lab notebook covers and PowerPoint; and, of course, the engineering design process, which includes solving a problem by brain storming, constructing, testing, and revising.

Two awards are presented for task for a total of 18, as well as the overall first- and second-place winners. In addition to being first overall, the “Space Pigs” were awarded first place in rock collecting, first place for their PowerPoint presentation, second place for hill climb and second place for blind driving. The “Space Farmers” took first place in hill climbing, first place for their poster, second place for their lab notebook, second place in the speed obstacle course, and second place for their PowerPoint presentation.

During the competition, Beno said the kids were polite and respectful, with positive attitudes, good sportsmanship and great teamwork.

“They headed to the competition confident that they had built strong competitive rovers, but nervous, knowing they had had little time to practice their team presentations and practice driving the rovers, and were missing a few key components on their engineering design process check list,” she said.

Typically they begin the process in October and work through April to prepare for the annual competition. This year, however, because of a delay in funding, Beno said they didn’t get going until January, meeting once a week after school.

Keefe said their rover had some challenges getting uphill. However, Dalton said, it was slow and had a lot of torque, so it collected rocks well. Each of the sixth-graders had their favorite part of the project, ranging from designing the PowerPoint to working together as a team. Dalton said his favorite part of the whole project was working as a team. For the fifth-grade team, Clayton said one of the biggest challenges they faced was trying to settle on a design for their rover — it changed a number of times. Riley said learning how to do pie charts was challenging as well, because she had never done one prior to the project. But the fifth graders said they enjoyed the project overall and look forward to possibly doing it again next year.

Except for Austin, all of the sixth-grade team members participated in the competition last year as well. While the kids agreed they “goofed off” a bit last year, they said they worked “really hard” for this year. Their hard work paid off as they were the top team in the competition.

Although the competition was not held at UI this year, the kids did get a shuttle to the campus to attend the annual College of Engineering Expo. During the event, the graduating students show off everything they learned throughout their time in the UI program.

“They have exactly what we do — they have posters, they have models, they have lab notebooks — so it’s a perfect alignment,” Beno said.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailybee.