TEAM 4201 (Feb. 2014) | Page 31

Da Vinci offers many diverse seminar options. Seminars are classes that students take at the end of each day and are not strictly academic. Da Vinci offers athletic seminars like Cross Fit and Rock climbing, academic seminars like Study Skills and Math Support, engineering seminars like Digital Electronics and Civil Engineering and much, much more.

One of the seminars that is offered at Da Vinci is Submarine Robotics. This class teaches students how to build a machine that can function and maneuver under water. Students learn what is advantageous in an underwater robot and what is not advantageous. Students learn how to achieve neutral buoyancy in their robot through a series of experiments and tests. In this seminar students also learn how to: solder, wire motors, make waterproof motors, make a controller, and much more.

Another seminar that is offered at Da Vinci is VEX robotics. In VEX robotics students are given rules to a game and must build a robot out of VEX equipment that can successfully play this game. Last year was the first year Da Vinci had an official VEX team and will continue the VEX program. In this seminar, students learned to code on the platform Robot in the languages Cortex and Natural Language. Students not only learned skills essential to creating a robot but also leadership and collaboration skills.

"I like VEX Robotics because it allows me to go into the engineering design process by building a competition robot and then programming it to make the robot the best it can be for competition."

-Student taking VEX Robotics Seminar

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