We teamed up with Cross River Rail to run a public robotics workshop at the Cross River Rail Experience Centre in Brisbane. The event introduced families and young learners to coding and robotics through hands-on activities with the Rover.
Cross River Rail is one of Queensland's biggest infrastructure projects, and they've got a really solid community engagement program aimed at inspiring the next generation of engineers and builders. The partnership gave their public programming a STEM education angle and connected the world of big infrastructure with the skills students will need for careers in tech and engineering.
In the workshop, kids programmed Rovers to navigate obstacle courses and complete engineering-themed challenges inspired by the Cross River Rail project. We pitched the activities to be accessible from grade 3 up, with our facilitators walking participants through the basics of block-based coding.
We had a strong turnout from families across Brisbane, and it was a good demonstration of how the platform works outside the traditional classroom setting. Public workshops like this also reach kids who might not have access to robotics at school, which is something we care about.
We're seeing more infrastructure and industry organisations use Micromelon to engage their communities in STEM, which is a really nice trend to be part of.