Robots seize student minds

Outside the Verdugo Woodlands Elementary cafeteria, an underwater robot swam around in a large portable pool Wednesday, providing proof of what students can do and perhaps pointing them toward future careers.

Clark Magnet High School students were using the machine to show off the virtues of reading and robotics.

"This is not just for nerds," said 15-year-old Emily Burke, 10th-grade robotics student at Clark Magnet High, referring to building robots. "Anyone could do it. We have C students that do it, A students that do it. This is really universal."

Engineers and robot technicians, young and old, invaded family reading night at the elementary school on Wednesday. This year's theme was robots, said first-grade teacher and event organizer Rosina Maize.

Clark Magnet students showed off a 5-foot-tall robot from a competition two years ago that can hang inflatable tubes onto pegs. The also exhibited an underwater robot that used an electromagnet to pick up items, and a few vehicles that can use arms to pick up items like baseballs.

"I liked when I controlled the water robot," said Conner Rodriguez, 8, who briefly got to use the controls. "I let it move around. And it went on its side and the propellers splashed a bunch of people."

Maize invited seven engineers and technicians from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, about 10 Clark Magnet High robotics students and the elementary school's own Gifted and Talented Education students.

More than half the school's students and their parents were at the event, Maize said.

"It's a multi-generational event," Maize said. "Students get to see the [Gifted and Talented Education] students, the robotics students from Clark Magnet and the amazing people from JPL…. It kind of shows them the path that they may take in life."

As the students went from station to station, they got to see the different phases of a high-tech career.

Verdugo Woodlands students in the Gifted and Talented Education — an advanced learning program — showed their fellow students their own simplified robots made from LEGO sets.

"We met in classes every Monday to make the machine," said Anshika Niraj, 11, who is in the advanced program. "In about mid-April we'll have a competition."

After presentations made by Anshika and her fellow students, JPL engineers read to the students. Duane Roth, deputy navigation team chief for the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, talked about his work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn's orbit in 2004, he said.

Roth said that the children were less interested in the books and more interested in what Roth does.

"I think [reading night] is great," he said. "I think anything to get them interested in learning is great."

John Louie, program element manager for ground data systems at JPL, said he did not have events like this when he was in school. His son is a second-grader at Verdugo Woodlands.

"I hope it was inspiring," Louie said. "It's fun to read to them and see them excited about space and robotics."