Micromelon Heads North to Cairns State High School

Tim from Micromelon meeting with Design Technology teachers at Cairns State High School showing off some of the 3D printed parts they can use with the Micromelon Rover and collecting some future feature ideas for the Micromelon Robot Simulator

In June, Micromelon headed up north to Cairns to visit some of our schools as part of the Gateway To Industry Schools ICT Program. As part of this trip we visited Bentley Park College and the TAFE campus to look at all their work in Virtual Reality particularly in the health sector.

We also got to visit Cairns State High School, a GISP ICT partner, and also a Micromelon school. During the visit we met with the Design and Technology teachers at Cairns State High to discuss the ways the Micromelon Rover can be used to teach design, with 3D printing and robotics having a natural mesh. We also got a tour of their classrooms, seeing there 3D printing, laser cutting and even resin printing capabilities. It was also a great opportunity to gather some feedback from more teachers using the Micromelon platform to help feed future product development.

On the last day of the trip we got to drop into Cairns State High School again to see two classes working on their Sumo robotics unit and Tim from Micromelon gave some tips and tricks on how to program a really effective sumo robot. It was really exciting to see the students using Micromelon Rovers along with the ACS supported Micromelon Rover Simulator to tune in their Sumo robots and practice against both real and virtual opponents.

“Teaching with robotics offers so many learning opportunities for students. Programming the robots can reinforce the use of coding languages and software, and working with robotic components and sensors advances an understanding of hardware. Through the setting of challenging tasks, students use data, problem solving and collaboration to succeed just as they would in the workplace. It is great to see how emphatically Cairns State High School has taken to the Micromelon Robot Simulator and Code Editor to continue developing STEM skills in students.” - Matthew Jorgensen, ACS

Overall the trip was a great opportunity to visit the region, talk to teachers and improve our offerings outside of South East Queensland. A huge thanks to ACS and The Gateway to Industry School ICT Program for supporting the trip and the Micromelon Robot Simulator in schools around Queensland.