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Students from Greenville High School, Tri County High School and Central Montcalm Middle School showcased their tech products at Montcalm Community College’s third annual Tech Fest on Feb. 5.

The Greenville RoboJackets robotics team received plenty of attention by showcasing their competition robot from last season. The RoboJackets program, in its ninth year of existence, regularly competes in For Inspiration and Recognition of Science (FIRST) Robotics Competitions, where new robots are built each season for a specific competition showcase. Kitbots are delivered to FIRST teams and they’re tasked with building around the kitbot within a period of just two months before competition begins.

“FIRST Robotics is all student-led,” said Claude Johnson, RoboJackets coach and head of the Greenville robotics program. “My job is to help guide them through the build but not do it for them, so I let them do the work.”

Members of the team must adhere to very specific dimensions and measurements of parts when building the robots so they can pass inspections during competition time. If an inspection fails before the competition, teams are expected to try and make their robots competition readythe same day by performing modifications. This type of work involves a lot of planning, but that’s part of what intrigued Greenville sophomore James Kinser to join the club last year as a freshman.

“I like the designing and building aspects, the planning of strategies and thinking about how you can score the most points in competition — those are my favorite parts,” Kinser said. “Driving the robot during competitions is really fun, as well. During qualification, we have a few people rotating through driving duties. Whoever we felt was doing the best got to drive during the playoffs, and that was me last year.”

Last year’s RoboJackets team featured an entirely new group with no returning students. Even so, the team managed to secure a couple of top two finishes in competition. With such a young group, Johnson is seeing very noticeable growth from last year and expects his team to show that growth once their competition season begins March 6 in Mount Pleasant.

“They’ve grown a lot,” Johnson said. “If we were to use a percentage, from 0-100, I’d say some of them have surpassed 100. The new kids that are coming in, they’re liking it and taking to it well. We’re going to be at a good level of competition soon and it’s exciting.”

Being a part of Tech Fest was a great experience for the RoboJackets, who were the only robotics team in attendance.

“It helps get the word out,” Kinser said. “Not a lot of people know about FIRST Roboticsand I think it’s a really cool program to be a part of.”

“It’s great exposure for our program,” Johnson added. “It’s also letting the other students know that they can do this, too. That’s why I’m letting James and the other students do the talking. I can talk all day long about it but coming from their peers, it makes more of an impact. Some of these students might go back to their schools and try to convince their schools to do it. I think it’s a great program because it deals a lot with STEM and it’s a lot of fun.”

Perhaps the largest group in attendance at Tech Fest was Shannon Oswald’s Problem-Solving class from Central Montcalm Middle School. With 16 of her students in attendance, they stayed busy showing off their musical instruments and video game controllers created from household materials such as cardboard, tin foil, playdough and graphite. This was done with the assistance of Makey Makey — a STEM invention kit which connects everyday objects to inputs for computer keys.

“We have pretty much an unlimited supply of cardboard and aluminum foil and they loved the creative aspect of it,” Oswald said. “There were no restrictions and no stifling; they didn’t have to follow any sort of restrictive guidelines. I think they really liked knowing they were going to show it off. That really motivated them to make it work and not just give up on it.”

Perhaps even more impressively, Oswald’s students had just two weeks to work on their projects for Tech Fest, but all the projects were finished and ready for users to test out at the expo.

“I was really floored with what they did in one class period,” Oswald said. “One day it was, ‘try to create an instrument or a video game controller,’ and even in those 50 minutes, we were amazed at what they pulled off.”

Sixth-grader Chase Fulger was excited to show off his drum set controller, made from sticks, connector cables, aluminum foil and cardboard. He was glad that people wanted to try out the drum set and was happy to see it work as he planned.

“When I was seven or eight, I wanted to be a drummer,” Fulger said. “But now, I want to be a scientist.”

Sixth-grader Landon Rau worked on a steering wheel, gas and brakes that were attached to a motorcycle racing game made from cardboard, tape, aluminum foil and plenty of connector cables. While many of his classmates were making musical instruments, Rau wanted to stand out.

“We just felt like we wanted to be different from the others and build something else,” he said.

The Tech Fest experience was very beneficial to Oswald’s group as it allowed them to step out of their comfort zone.

“I had kids come in with severe anxiety and they sat against the window right away,” she said. “After an hour and a half, they were up and walking around and presenting. Just that alone is huge but not to mention the things they saw here. They’re a younger group and this helps to build them up a little bit. Showing it off and seeing adults love what they’ve done and being truly curious and talking to them I think has helped so much.”

“It’s pretty fun to walk around and look at people’s projects and also let people test your project out,” Rau added. “It feels good to know it works and make it successful.”

While Central Montcalm had a handful of representatives, Tri County had just one — freshman Berkley Armstrong — but she made quite the impression by showcasing her self-made apps.

“My passion started when I took a Middle school STEM class and I was introduced to coding,” Armstrong said. “It opened my eyes to all the possibilities of creating things people can use and experience.”

Armstrong showcased three apps that she created herself, including ChronoquestAcademy — an AI-Powered Learning Platform that helps students with studying by creating quizzes and making games out of learning. Armstrong also showcased an app called Stop, which allows users to find certain landmarks on their way to a destination and sort them by rating. Those looking for the best restrooms, parking and food along their route can plug in their destination and plan accordingly.

Armstrong also showcased an app called Timeless Tales — a cloud-based app powered by AI which connects family members and allows them to input different family memories for ancestors to see in the future.

“My apps began as an experiment to see what I could create on my own that would be beneficial for others, of all ages and experience levels, to improve their everyday lives,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong’s display was near the expo entrance and the colorful apps, along with her impressive STEM display, created quite the draw for patrons of Tech Fest.

“Tech Fest opened my eyes to all the paths and careers that STEM offers,” she said. “It also showed me what a strong supportive community surrounds the field of STEM.”