While a lot of their classmates were enjoying Friday off, about a dozen Henryetta elementary students were in the classroom getting ready for a robot battle.
The students were fine-tuning their robots for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Junior Botball Challenge. Held at the Tulsa Expo Pavilion Saturday, the challenge brings young engineers and computer experts together to show off their skills.
A total of 48 schools with over 800 students participated in the day-long program. It started a year ago.
The program provides equipment, software, curriculum and professional development to elementary educators (K-8) to enable them to teach their students to write computer code coupled with real-life applications of the engineering design process.
Students use classroom skills as well as their own problem-solving abilities to compete.
The robots have to complete a series of courses with twists and turns all within a four-foot square area.
Sponsored by NASA, tBotball Program is a competition based program that currently servers around 10,000 students in 13 U.S. and five international regions.