Photo by Jenny Kirk Dash robots were on the move during a coding session that was part of the 2018 Science and Nature Conference on Wednesday at Southwest Minnesota State University. Among the many participants were Minneota Elementary students (from left) Creed Stassen and Carter Anderson.

MARSHALL — There were exciting hands-on opportunities to learn about archaeological digs, kitchen chemistry, water bugs, robots, minerals, honey bees, being a veterinarian or junior crime scene investigator, making a garden grow and so much more at the 24th annual Science and Nature Conference on Wednesday.

“It went good,” Murray County Central kindergartner Paige Schuur said after attending presenter Sam Jens’ Scribble Bots session. “It’s a scribble box.”

A scribble bot is a little robot that colors on its own. Most operate off of a small vibrating motor that is powered by batteries.

“You take off the lids on the markers, you put in the batteries and then it scribbles around,” Schuur said. “It spins around in a circle. (The scribble bot) has a motor.”

According to event organizer Andrea Anderson, the 2018 conference included 1,460 students and adult chaperones. Anderson is the student activities coordinator at Southwest West Central Service Cooperative, which presents the Science and Nature Conference each year.

“It’s awesome” Marshall Middle School fifth-grader Brianna Luckhardt said about her experience at the event. “It was fun.”

Along with the students who represented 27 school districts, there were also students from 115 individual families that participated. Each of the K-8 students had the opportunity to take part in three different sessions that were scattered throughout the Southwest Minnesota State University campus.

“There was a fishing one, where it shows you what type of fish there are, and there was a tree one, where they showed you different types of trees and what they do,” Luckhardt said.

Marshall student Salem Frost was excited to attend the Rolling Dash Robot session presented by MMS technology teacher Theresa McCoy.

“I like it,” Frost said. “We’re coding robots. It’s hard, but it’s fun.”

The West Side fourth-grader has attended the Science and Nature Conference for the past four years.

“It’s just fun to be here,” Frost said.

Frost’s mom, Stacy Frost, said she appreciates the wide variety of sessions available and that many of the presenters are from the area.

“It just reaffirms what he’s interested in,” Frost said about her son attending the conference. “This year, he’s in robots, robots and gardening. John DeCramer and Mike Lee lead the first robot session and then Theresa McCoy led the second robot session. She’ll be his fifth-grade teacher next year. I think it’s neat that there are a lot of local leaders doing all these different sessions. If these kids want to learn more or get connected, there’s mentorship possibilities, I think.”

McCoy has been a presenter for the past three years and enjoys the possibility of sparking interests in coding.

“They’re coding the robot to move,” she said. “They’re giving it Blockly code that we’re using. They give it the instructions to come back and forth. They’ve written an algorithm.”

Among other things, the students are learning to problem solve.

“They’re having to go back in and fix their code,” McCoy said. “They start giving it one piece of code and it only goes so far. Then they go back in and add more. Once they come to the end, now they’re adding sounds, turning and going backwards.”

McCoy said the dash robots were purchased with classroom dollars and funds from the Marshall Public Schools’ parent-teacher association (PTA).

“I feel fortunate to have this many Dash robots,” she said. “It gives different kids an opportunity to try coding and try robots.”

Thirty-seven presenters were willing to share their time and talents this year.

“Every year, I think we have the best sessions we’ve ever had and this year is no exception,” said Tom Hoff, career and technical project coordinator at SWWC. “There’s a lot of diversity, plus the weather was nice. We were able to do our outside activities.”

Ron Prorok shared his expertise with beekeeping.

“There’s been a lot of young kids with a lot of great questions,” he said. “They’re smart kids. There’s a lot of interest in pollinators and bees right now.”

Prorok had Italian and carniolan type of bees on display for the students to see.

“They’re both honey bees,” he said.

Some of the sessions got a little messy. MMS student Kaziah Kelsey and Tracy Area’s Devin Carter were among the many students to engage in a mini archaeological dig. The students also learned about the 2,000-year-old, life-size Terra Cotta soldiers and horses that were unearthed in northwest China in 1974.

Before starting the junior crime scene investigation session, presenter Tim Tomasek covered the tables with newspaper, indicating that things could get a little messy, especially when they started the fingerprinting process.

“In real life, crime doesn’t get solved in an hour like you see on TV,” he said. “Those shows are entertaining, but they don’t always reflect true crime scene investigations.”

Presenter Katie Chapman engaged students with a session revolving around water bugs.

“They have an important job,” Chapman said. “They’re considered an indicator species because they tell us when something isn’t right.”

Mike Billington, who has trained nearly 50 eagles, hawks, falcons and owls that are used in educational programs, served as this year’s keynote speaker. Minnesota has 31 different species of raptors that can be found throughout the state.

“He talked about different animals,” Luckhardt said. “He was from The Raptor Center. That was fun.”

Hoff said he’s grateful for the number of volunteers who help out — more and more are needed as the conference continues to grow.

“We have people from throughout the Service Co-op that don’t necessarily work with our student enrichment programs, but they come out of the woodwork from different departments to help,” he said. “Without them, we just wouldn’t be able to do this. There’s also a lot of SMSU faculty who volunteer their time to teach sessions.”

Next year will be the 25th year for the conference. Hoff said he believes the combination of real-world presenters, available volunteers, enthusiastic students and the wide array of hands-on opportunities has led to its success year after year.

“(The conference) is just so much hands-on and it’s so diverse,” Hoff said. “You’re getting students who are interested in technology, interested in the outdoors and interested in science and math. You get a diverse group. And I think some schools are starting to use this as their end-of-the-year field trip.”