Not everyone can say that while in school they were afforded the opportunity to create something unique and invent something that could possibly position them on the frontline of greatness, but for a few students of the Bartica Secondary School that opportunity has presented itself and they are taking full advantage of it.
Bartica is being touted as the “Green Town” of Guyana and with that in mind, the Bartica Secondary School’s STEM Club invented the Roco163A. The Roco163A was created to aid the Town to promote the green agenda by assisting with garbage disposal.
The Club was started in February as a part of the STEMGuyana initiative to introduce STEM into the school’s curriculum.
“We have 20 students with 16 being active members, and they are involved in robot building and Scratch coding and we don’t have any problems as yet, but we were able to gain outstanding research in the recent robot
ics competition,” Coach Onicka Chisholm said.
Onicka is the Science and Technology teacher at the School and was selected to undergo the Coaching Training Workshop with STEM Guyana after which she started coaching the Club along with her co-Coach Clinton Bobb.
“The children are very excited about it, especially about the robot building and when it comes to the Scratch coding the students are able to express their ideas through stories and how they see it in Scratch coding. It’s
basically allowing them to create different animations of their choices and it is encouraging to see them create things,” she noted.
“It has impacted the students and their eagerness to learn. Come September we will be taking in more and more for our STEM Club. We are trying to have more females join the Club because we have 65 per cent males and 35 per cent females.”
For now, the Club meets Monday to Friday after classes.
At the recently-concluded STEM Robotics Expo, apart from introducing Roco163A, they also built a bulldozer that works hand in hand with Roco to aid in garbage disposal.
When asked what advice she has for a young person wanting to be a part of the STEM field, Onicka said that they should follow their passion and dream big. However, she noted that focus and determination were everything. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
