Girl Scouts Come to Campus for Robotics Workshop
Ranney students shared their programming and driving skills with local scouts for a day of coding and fun!
On Saturday, March 5, approximately 30 brownies, juniors and cadettes came to the Ranney School campus for a special Robotics Workshop. The joint Ranney-Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore event provided girls in the third-eighth grades a chance to code, program and drive VEX robots using RobotC software.
The workshop was led by Ranney’s Robotics Program Advisor Chiara Shah and junior Nicole Rasmussen, who is pursuing her Girl Scout Gold Award in coding. Also on board to help were several Upper and Middle School volunteers who participate in Ranney Robotics, including senior Brandon Gioggia of Belford who gave a demo of his award-winning, ball-tossing robot and senior Vasilios Nicholas of Holmdel, who shared his self-designed underwater robot.
“So many of the girls jumped right into the coding, even jumping ahead a few steps to figure out that negative numbers were needed to make their robot go backwards,” said Mrs. Shah. “It’s wonderful see so many young girls interested in this kind of STEM-based program.”
Girl Scouts worked in teams of two, paired with a Ranney student volunteer, to learn how to program their assigned robot to perform several tasks, including relay drills, right-angle turns around a box (a Girl Scout cookie box, of course) and figure eights. They also had a chance to test-drive Ranney’s underwater robot in the Aquatic Center.
Ranney’s Robotics program students have qualified for three World Championship events since the program’s launch in 2010—and will be heading to t heir fourth global tournament this spring. Follow
Ranney Robotics.
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