Engineering activities at Pine Tree High School

Robotics  Club

Sponsors: Elizabeth White & Brittney Jones

Robotics Club meets after school to prepare for several yearly contests including the Texas Computer Education Association Robotics Contest and the Region 7 Robotics Contests. TCEA contest requires a great amount of planning, design and practice prior to the competition. The theme of TCEA's 2018 contest was "Mission to Mars"- where students had to design robots with self- extracting communication systems, colors sensors, and the ability to pick up soil samples and return them to base camp. Region 7 Robotics Contests are on-the-spot, skills tests that encourage team work and quick thinking. 

Engineering at Pine Tree High

Our classes our hands-on, real-world, and design driven. With our STEM activities we stress the engineering design process for each project and introduce students to different types of engineering: civil, mechanical, biomedical, aerospace. etc. We balance our innovative design challenges with a strong understanding of engineering history from culturally diverse viewpoints. Our reading list includes books such as:

• The Boy Who Harnessed Wind, by William Kamkwamba,
• Autobiography of Henry Ossian Flipper, ( Published in 1878, the first African American to graduate from West Point Military Academy with a engineering degree.) 
• The Great Bridge, by David McCoullough
• Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly

 

Finally, our engineering students understand professional responsibilities and writing with their digital engineering websites- each student writes regular blogs about engineering and posts examples of their projects online. 

Engineering Field Trips at Pine Tree High School:
Understanding real-world contributions of engineers is critical to making a valid career choice. At Pine Tree High, we work closely with local universities and engineering companies to expose our students to the latest in technology research and production. Some of the places we visited recently are :

• NASA, and the Neutral Boyancy Lab
• LeTourneau University Engineering Dept
• Eastman Chemical
• Komatsu
• Texas A&M Department of Visualization
• Perot Science Museum- Amusement Park Physics

Girls in Technology Day

Pine Tree ISD students teamed with Komatsu Mining to host a Girls in Tech event at the company's Longview plant. The goal was to let the students explore different technology- and engineering-related activities, from drones to building tiny robots to simulating driving the equipment that Komatsu uses. 

Longview New Journal Article