This past week, the STEM Tech Olympiad took place at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event took place from April 27^th to April 29^th and consisted of different events encouraging “technology literacy” for students of all ages. Miami Lakes Educational Center competed in many events that took place at the convention.

Mr. Kynerd’s junior class of engineers participated in the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a project they had been working on collectively since November 2011. The Miami Cure for Paralysis is a competition for high school students under the Buoniconti Fund to fully design and create a product to improve the lives of paraplegics and quadriplegics. The team consisted of 14 members (Alejandro Aguilar, Javon Brown, Andrew Gayle, Samuel  Hassle, Diego Horna, Alexander Kao, Isaac Manjarres, Paula Mejia, Kailani Montane, Stefan Pirone, Andrew Sanzetenea, Stephen Scott, Jason Silvela and Suzanne Wong) with Stephen Scott as Project Manager, who also came up with the original concept design.  The team won Best All Around in the competition with their product, “the Clearway”, which is meant to prevent wheelchair users from hitting debris in their pace and possibly injuring themselves.

Team Jag, the MLEC Robotics club, had five robots participate in the Bots IQ event. Bots IQ is a competition where students, ranging from middle school to college, “battle” their robots, one against another. The Rattler I team, consisting of Bryan Gutierrez and Jameel Reed and Alain Hernandez as driver took Second Place in the 15 lb robot division. The Sting WMD team, consisting of Javon Brown, Diego Horna, Victor Pino and Stephen Scott as driver, won the Best Engineered Robot prize.  And Team Jag as a whole was awarded the Sportsmanship award for their exemplary conduct throughout the whole of the competition.

 Twelve 9^th and 10^th grade students participated as a team in the VEXing Challenge; where students had 48 hours to design and build robots using limited materials from VEX kits. The team of Pablo Conde and Carlos Garcia won 3^rd Place as well as the Best Engineered award for their VEX robot.

Omar Morales, Jameel Reed and Meshar Williams competed in the Computer Programming competition,  where teams of 2-3 high school and college students had a specific amount of time to solve five programming challenges. 

All of us here at Miami Lakes Educational Center are extremely proud of all our students who competed in the events and congratulate all our competitors for their performances.

With BOTSIQ  at the STEM Tech Olympiad coming up, the entire Robotics club is hard at work preparing their robots to give the performance that we’ve been waiting all year for. Along with the 15 lb. bots that usually fight, we will also be competing in the VEX competitions and a parallel project that Mr. Kynerd’s junior class is also working on is the Cure for Paralysis Project, which will also be presented at the STEM Tech Olympiad.

Miami Lakes hopes to perform well in all our competitions and that our hard work will pay off next week!

Recently, MasterCam came down to visit the lab at Miami Lakes Educational Center.

They wrote an article about instructor Mr. Paul Kynerd, Sting ‘Em driver,  Andrea Flores, who is the  second female in the nation to be Mastercam Certified. The article elaborates on the integration of MasterCam and MasterCam Univeristy into the classroom at Miami Lakes Educational Center and other exciting new techniques for teaching STEM in the classroom.

http://blog.mastercam.com/2012/03/battling-robots-and-manufacturing.html#links

Currently  under construction, 15 lb Melty Robot!

The Team Jag Robotics club dominated at the recent event, Mayhem in Miami 2012 at Star Bots! 

The Miami Lakes Robotics club was succesful in taking first, second and third place.

The MasterCam sponsored, all-girls team with the robot Sting ‘Em won 3rd place.

First generation robot Rattler I won 2nd place.

And the all underclassmen team with 3rd generation robot Sting WMD won 1st place.

Congratulations to all our winning teams and all our graceful competitors! We look forward to competing at the Miami-Dade Youth Fair and then Nationals!