In the future, where will we live? What fuel will we use? How can we sustain the population?
Students from Arlington Christian School's Talented and Gifted middle school program sought answers to those questions in the "Future Cities" competition at Southern Polytechnic State University recently.
As part of the 19th Annual National Engineers Week Foundation competition, students designed a virtual city of the future using the video game SimCity 4, wrote a research paper on "Fuel Your Future" about the energy source each group used to run their city, built a scale model of a portion of the community and presented the project to panels of judges.
Papers and virtual cities were submitted for judging in advance. On the day of competition, 147 teams representing 47 schools discussed their work with two panels and were evaluated by 35 judges, who presented awards for outstanding projects.
Dawn Ramsey of SPSU noted that 2,500 middle schoolers participated in the event, which "challenges students in engineering, computing, communication, city planning, design, construction and technical writing."
An Arlington team comprised of eighth-graders Delaney Craig and Sequoia Johnson and sixth-grader Cheyenne Teems won "Best Management of Water Resources." Other Arlington students participating in the event were eighth-grader Michaela Taylor of Sharpsburg, seventh-grader Reagan Brinkley of Newnan, and seventh-graders Marvin Hubbard and Nicholas Phillips; and sixth-graders Matthew McCready, Sonny Nguyen and alternate Jamiah Campbell.
"I thought their projects were impressive," ACS gifted coordinator Chris Taylor said.
It was Arlington's first time entering a project, which took four months to complete. Taylor, who is from Sharpsburg, said the experience was valuable for team members.
"They learned to value the research process and collaboration among peers," Taylor said. "We would also like thank our mentor for the project, Ken Hearn, who made suggestions and helped students formulate questions about the future which their projects could address."
