Eighteen Cadette Girl Scouts participated in a Robotics Workshop this past Saturday. Girl Scout Troops 134, 1221 and 1628 participated at the December 9 event at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts located in Reading, Pennsylvania.

To complete the Programming Robotics badge requirements, the Cadettes completed four stations during the workshop. The most popular involved a LED greeting card. This station required them to build a circuit using a light bulb, copper tape, and a battery. The scouts were excited to have their card glow when the circuit was complete.

The Cadettes also learned about other technologies. LEGO Mindstorms, which allows users to build and program robots, were utilized by the scouts to have their robot follow basic commands. They also programmed a video game using Scratch. Scratch is a website that can be used to learn the process of coding.  littleBits components were also introduced to the scouts. The Cadettes created a series of solutions to our challenges by building circuits that created a dimmable light, magic eight ball, and a feather duster using littleBits input and output components.

This introductory hands-on workshop was meant for girls to learn the basic of robotics. According to Solange Israel-Mintz, LaunchBox Coordinator, “A good way to think about a robot is that it is a computer that moves.” The scouts learned that a simple set of instructions can be used to solve a problem or complete a task. They also began to grasp that careers in STEM fields are open to anyone interested in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

This one-time camp was completed in just a few hours. More in-depth week long middle school camps are held at Penn State Berks over the summer.