This is the first week of practices for robotics teams on the Bolles Middle School Bartram Campus. Students are gearing up for a history-making season, which will be mostly virtual and includes coordination with at-home team members.

“Just like our regular classes, we have some team members on campus and some at home, so our practices will use the blended learning model this season,” said robotics teacher and coach Mark Meyers.

He said there are currently five at-home team members and 10 students who are participating on-campus. Those who are working from home have been assigned season mission models to build and send back to school when they are finished. To design and build robots, students will be using virtual modeling tools that can export designs for students to build on campus.

How will competing virtually work? Like all pandemic work-arounds, it will be undoubtedly be new and different than past procedures. Teams will be submitting recordings of robot runs and working on project and robot design presentations. While typically done in-person at crowded competition venues, this year’s judges will review presentations and schedule live Zoom calls for question and answer sessions to determine which teams will advance to other tournaments.

“It all should make for quite an innovative robotics season!” Meyers said. For more photos from this week's blended robotics practice, visit our online gallery here.