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08/12/2025 – Da'ok Academy ended its Summer Exploration Camp with a robotics exhibition that featured five teams of presenters last July 25 at Koblerville Elementary School.
Team 1 was made up of BritneyleneJunie Lizama, Avalone Mendiola, Angellyna Atalig, and Johnson Alam, and their robot’s name was Sum Ting Wong.
Team 2 included Kenny Dela Cruz, John Bokuku, Kauhane Cabael, and Carter Castro was Chang.
Curiosity was the name of Team 3’s robot, and members included Nathalie Matsunaga, Owen Quitugua, Jayanna Ruiz, Liahlyn Tumada, and Brettania Fanagiluy.
Team 4 was made up of Jared Saures, Samuel Rigby, Jackary Saures, Leelan Litulumar, and Jayvin Bisek with their robot called Mama Cita.
As the exhibition went on, Team 3 was split into two, with Matsunaga taking charge of the line tracker for Curiosity and Quitugua and Ruiz doing the Roomba clone.
The successful presenters were Team 1 with Mendiola and Lizama on the controls; Team 2 and 4 did not present due to technical problems, while Team 3 did two presentations—the aforementioned line tracker and the Roomba clone.
Matsunaga said the culminating event was her favorite part of the summer school camp.
“It really sparked my mind with ideas of things that I could do. The field trips, of course, because it's fun to go out. We went fishing once. That was really fun. I didn't catch anything, unfortunately. But it was still a fun experience.”
She added that instead of being frustrated, testing robots, failing, the fixing them was truly an enjoyable learning experience.
“[There’s] a sense of accomplishment when you finally finish, and the problems are gone, and it's working perfectly, which is another type of feeling.”
Matsunaga enjoyed robotics so much that she’s now contemplating making a career out of it.
“Honestly, when I first heard about robotics, I thought, No way. No shot I would ever do it. I don't think I have the brains for that. But after I tried it, I think I honestly have a nice chance because I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I ever did.”
Like Matsunaga, Quitugua also said, hands down, her favorite part of summer camp was the robotics part.
“I think robotics was one of my favorite sessions in our summer program. I'm really interested in robotics. I'm not sure if it's something I want to pursue as a career, but it's definitely something that I'm really glad to have come across and learned.”
Da’ok Academy principal Christine Tudela congratulated everyone who took part in their Summer Exploration Camp, and was overjoyed at the success of their culminating event, which was the robotics program.
“I'm very, very heartfelt happy because we are so excited to see them really believe in themselves, creating these robots. At first, they were, like, not really into it. And by the time they started learning the coding and seeing the outcome of what they built, they never wanted to let it go. That was one part of the class where they were just in groups working as a team, trying to make things possible for their robots to follow the codes that they decided,” she said.
Robotics program teacher Arnel Gruspe said, despite condensing a five-week STEM program into a summer robotics session, all the students still did well.
“They started up from zero to hero. Zero means they know nothing. I gave them a lecture on coding, blocks, and programming. At scratch, we call it blocks, that's easy. They progressed from block programming to actual C language manual coding. On the blocks, it's easy. You just drag and drop the contents. But in C language, for Arduino [microcontroller], they really have to type it. There's a microbot, cute bot, wherein those smaller robots are using those blocks programming, and then they progress it to their own robot project,” he said.
Report by Mark Rabago
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