TheGreenville High School Gymnasium will be transformed this weekend into battlinggrounds for 82 robots as GISD hosts the district’s first ever RegionalQualifying VEX tournament. The Greenville ISD VEX Toss UP Tournament will feature82 teams from Quinlan, Paris, Sulphur Springs, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

VEX Toss Up is played on a 12’x12’square field with two alliances of two teams each competing in matchesconsisting of a fifteen second autonomous period followed by one minute andforty-five seconds of driver controlled play. The object of the game is toobtain a higher score than the opposing alliance by scoring balls into variouszones and goals.

The VEX IQ platform and curriculum iscurrently used in all elementary campuses in Greenville ISD. Utilizingintuitive, snapping parts sans tools, VEX IQ is a robotics platform designed totransform STEM learning for young students and their teachers. Students receivea comprehensive and interactive introduction to STEM education as they buildand design their customizable mobile robots.

In GISD Middle School and High Schoolclassrooms, the VEX Robotics platform and curriculum are utilized.Competition-based classes, offering the opportunity for students to design,build and compete with their robots on a world stage, are offered in thesecondary schools.

Now in the program’s third year, overthree hundred students are enrolled in VEX classes across Greenville ISD. In the2012-2013 school year, four GISD robots were named tournaments champions,nineteen trophies were awarded and over twenty technical and design awards wereearned across the district.