Sorenson will use the Bright Ideas Grant to fund a robotics project at South Stanly. In the project, Sorenson’s high school students will learn how to program and operate small humanoid robots. These high school students will later have the opportunity to demonstrate their programming skills and gain public speaking practice through a presentation of their humanoid robots to elementary classes. Students will have robots perform various tasks, including: performing push-ups,
doing yoga poses, dancing, playing soccer and even reading a story. Sorenson is excited about the “bots’” potential. He explained, “We really have a ton of flexibility, as we can program them to say and sing about anything. We can also program them to do specific moves.” Sorenson hopes that the elementary presentations spark the younger students’ interests and inspires them to take the middle school STEMS program and the electronics programs available at South Stanly.
SSHS teacher, Bill Sorenson, Bright Ideas Grant Recipient
Bill Sorenson, South Stanly High School Electronics teacher, was recently chosen as a recipient of one of the 2016 Bright Ideas Grants provided by Pee Dee Electric. For more than 20 years, North Carolina’s electric cooperatives have offered Bright Ideas education grants to teachers in K-12 classrooms, giving teachers the means to put their creative teaching ideas into action.