Ariel Blackwood, an eighth grader and GEAR UP participant at Okemah Middle School, has found her passion with robotics. Blackwood and her sister Rose along with 145 middle school age students had the opportunity to attend the Seminole State College GEAR UP summer camp in May 2019 that emphasized learning experiences in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) and included building and assembling roller coasters, robots, and drones.

It was the robots that Blackwood found interesting, challenging, and fun all at the same time. The robot curriculum included movement commands programmed into a computer and linked into the robots to execute movements. The summer camp experiences were designed to help students better understand how the STEM subjects work in real world applications.

While she was at summer camp she observed other students from various schools struggling when they first started with robotics.  As the week went on, the students really made progress with robotics.

“I want to bring that struggle here (Okemah Middle School) to show kids what they can do,” Blackwood said.

Blackwood works with Ms. Stark’s seventh grade math classes emphasizing the future will be robotics as she teaches the students the basics of robotics she learned at camp. She stated that other middle school teachers are becoming interested in robotics and teachers are asking Ms. Stark about what Blackwood is teaching to her math students.

Blackwood states that her career plan after high school is to go in the Navy and work in robotics.