SAN ANTONIO – The 2024 Olympics may be taking place this summer, but this week the Northside Independent School District is having their own version using mini robots.
This week seventh grade students are competing in different sports with Sphero BOLT, a coding robot.
“We have BOLT outside that’s going to go swimming. We have BOLT doing ski jumps,” Ginger Brown, a GT instructional support teacher at Northside ISD said.
About 800 students are participating in this year’s Texas SpherOlympics at the Northside Sports Gym.
“We have been working all year leading up to it with Sphero BOLT which is our amazing olympian today. All of our students in Northside have been able to practice all year long. Each school across the district has a set of BOLTs they have been able to practice these different sporting events and its all culminating today in our Texas SpherOlympics,” Brown said.
At the event, students apply coding and programming skills in different ways.
“It’s also those 24th century skills, the soft skills. It’s being able to communicate, collaborate, problem solve and fail forward,” Brown said.