By Jeff Kruse - Immaculata- La Salle HS
Photographer: COURTESY PHOTO
Nick Suarez, of Immaculata-La Salle High School’s robotics team, demonstrates one of their robots for a student at St. Michael School.
MIAMI | The award-winning robotics team at Immaculata-La Salle High School, affectionately known as Bosco’s Bots, recently paid a visit to St. Michael School, bringing with them some “show-and-tell.”
Several members of the team, along with their moderator, Scott Givonetti, brought a variety of robots to St. Michael’s for the day — small robots, big robots, and even a brand new drone, all created in Immaculata-La Salle’s STEAM lab. St. Michael’s entire student body rotated in and out to see the Immaculata-La Salle students demonstrate the robots. Some brave St. Michael students were even able to pilot the robots using remote control.
“It was a fabulous experience for the St. Michael’s students to get a genuine hands-on experience working with real-life robots,” said Givonetti. “There is a global need for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education at this point in our history, and Immaculata-La Salle is there to meet that need.”
Immaculata-La Salle was the first Catholic school (in a network of over 30,000 across the U.S.) to earn accreditation for their STEM program. The school has taken the initiative to art courses to the program, such as 3D Animation and Digital Design, making the new acronym STEAM. Bosco’s Bots have been in existence for several years now, and the team has finished in first and second place at several statewide competitions.
Aside from competing, Immaculata-La Salle students also seek to share their talents and skills with the community. St. Michael School is just beginning its STEAM program, to which they have added religion courses as well — thus creating yet another acronym STREAM.
“Don Bosco would be proud of the fact that Catholic schools have taken the initiative as leaders in such exciting fields as robotics,” said Givonetti. “However, he would be thrilled to know that while doing so, La Salle and St. Michael’s students have not forgotten their Catholic identity.”
