Cool Schools: Students golfing their way to success

Seventh and eighth graders at the Career Academy South Bend hope to use their creative thinking and engineering skills to get a hole in one.

Throughout the semester, students have worked to solve a real-world project. They were tasked with creating a miniature golf course that included obstacles. They also had to design a golf putter by using 3-D printing and robotics to tell the putter when to swing.

“As far as the robots, a lot of the programming, the kids are learning almost faster than we can keep up with them," said 7th Grade Science Teacher Wesley Weber.

This is the first year for a project of the kind and Weber said overall it was a success. “As the kids started to work on it they would see what others were doing and they would build on that,” he added.

For students it was an opportunity to do fun, hands-on work. “I really love building and working with my hands and creating something new,” said 8th Grader Travis Craig.

Each classroom had to pick a theme for their golf course and work together to build it.

Craig added that he learned how important is it to have teamwork. “It’s cool how you can just kind of listen and learn from them. You have to listen and work with your partner not against your partner,” he added.

8th grader Cody Bean said his favorite part was designing the robot that would be used to make the putter swing. “All we have to do is just click the button and it puts," he said of the robot.