Jan. 12—SYRACUSE — Girls can do anything and Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana Michiana is on a mission prove it. Daisies, Brownies and Junior Girl Scouts from the Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana Michiana’s 22 counties met for the educational program at Camp Logan in Syracuse for a LEGO-based robots program called Rockin’ Robots.
“We’re finding that by the time a girl is in like second or third grade, she’s already decided that science and math are for boys,” said Claire Forrest, chief marketing officer for the Girl Scouts. “She’s already decided that it may be intimidating or it’s not the correct career exploration or it’s maybe something she can’t do. We have girls here as young as first grade that are learning that this is for them — coding, science and robotics, is something that’s perfectly achievable.”
The Girls Scouts Program has four pillars: outdoors, entrepreneurship, STEM and life skills.
Candice Studebaker, senior STEM coordinator, led the program at Camp Logan using a lesson plan from LEGO Education.
Forrest said the program on Saturday also gave girls insight into the Python-like system using a version to maneuver the coding, the LEGO Education SPIKE App.
The educational program covered from the basics of identifying a robot to handling a robot to building and coding a robot.
“We all think, like, Wall-E, but there’s other robots, other mechanics,” Forrest said. “They’re exploring from start to finish why we need robots, what they’re used for; they can ideate what a robot can be used for in their own life.”
The educational lesson gives girls a scenario to solve using a robot. “Daniel” had too much stuff in his locker at school and he needed a robot to follow him home with all of his stuff. Girls were tasked with programming the robot to follow Daniel home using a premade grid.
After they finished that, they then prototyped using the Python-like system, what their own robot could look like and then use craft materials to build the creation to take home.
“The beautiful thing about the Girl Scout program as a whole is that it’s very girl-led,” Forrest said. “There are over 200 badges they can explore.”
Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.