If you’re wondering what a robotics competition is like, Paula Jung says it’s got the energy of a major league sporting event.
“It was like an arena,” Jung recalled. “Like we had this big giant gymnasium set for our robot rounds, and there were like eight different tables on each side of the gymnasium.”
In June, Jung and a robotics team of five students traveled to an international tournament outside of Boston. The Bethel-based group, called the Dirt Busters, spent the school year working on a project centered on this year’s robotic league theme: Unearthed.
To start, they learned how to develop a research project. Student James Perry said they began by sending out a survey to students at school.
“We just did a short, it was really short survey, but 80-5% did not know what archeology was about any sites or museums in the Y-K Delta,” Perry said. “and that's a very small amount, so we wanted to try to help encourage people knowing more about archeology.”
Over the course of the school year, the Dirt Busters researched dig sites in Alaska which they used to create an activity book. That book is designed for classrooms to incorporate into their curriculum, and it’s available on the State of Alaska History and Archaeology website.
After competing in the state robotics competition, the Dirt Busters were invited to attend the WPI Waffle First League Lego event in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In addition to the robot action in the arena, teams had booths where they presented their research. The Dirt Busters brought pieces of Alaska and Yup’ik culture to share, including agutak and a yuraq performance. They also taught other students how to sew their own traditional yo-yos and use story strings, which Jung said were both popular.
“They were just playing with them over and over and over and over and over again,” Jung said.
It was also a way to connect with students across the country and beyond.
“People all over the states, the countries, we all had that just one or two things that we all liked, that just shouldn't say, like brought us together and what made us so we would actually kind of talk to each other,” Perry said.
While near Boston, the students got to explore museums and even stumbled into an archaeological dig at the Bunker Hill memorial. Jung said the standout stop was the Museum of Ice cream, where the group found an unexpected connection to home.
“There was a like choose your own ice cream flavor and a trivia for ice cream and ice cream from around the world,” Jung explained. “And they actually had akutaq for in Alaska on the ice cream museum, and it was like so much fun that we got to see our native ice cream on the wall.”
For the Dirt Buster’s coach, Nicole Smith, the competition was a celebration of the students' hard work throughout the season. It’s Smith’s last season with the robotics team which she said kept her coming back year after year.
“I just come back to watching these kids figure out how to solve problems, how to work with each other as a team, and just the joy in pushing themselves as far as they can and watching what the outcome is going to be,” Smith said.
Smith was the recipient of a coach’s award at the competition for her ongoing work with the team. The Dirt Busters also took home a judges’ award, designated for outstanding work outside of the competition’s scoring.
