WARSAW — Students from elementary schools in the Warsaw Community Schools district were able to participate in the second annual Elementary Robotics Showcase on Saturday, March 18.

The Warsaw Area Career Center was filled on Saturday morning with students, teachers and members of the community as students showed the skills they have been learning.

During the two-hour event, students took part in battles and maze runs with the robot they had programmed. The kids had to engineer a sumo robot with the goal of pushing out or immobilizing another student’s robots in the ring. The maze run allowed students to program a robot to drive through the obstacles and tasks of the maze.

The robots were controlled by the students by syncing an iPad with the robots through Bluetooth.

Elementary students weren’t the only ones who got to participate during the event. During “celebrity battles,” students passed off their iPads to a guest to take control.

STEM Instructional Coach David Burden said, “The whole purpose of today is to further drive STEM education into every building in WCS. Our goal is that students have exposure to career possibilities and passions that are of interest to them.”

An initial donation from Zimmer-Biomet has allowed fourth through sixth grade students in all eight WCS elementary schools to utilize a total of 12 LEGO EV3 robots per school. Last year’s inaugural showcase came from the donation and this year’s event was built on that success.