There is a new classroom that has been just added to Grosse Pointe South, it is called the CIC room and the class taught there is innovative technology. This is taught by different South teachers, one of them being James Adams.

The room is located down the stairs under the gym, it was formerly an old garage. The class that Adams teaches is an Innovative Technology class. This class is an independent study class that combines new technology with old technology and is quite unique according to Adams.

“The room is really cool. It is an old garage that has been renovated and equipped with 3D printers, laptops, Chromebooks, VR (virtual reality) equipment, drill saws and more cool devices. The Cotton family donated most of the money for the renovation, that is why it is called the CIC, the Cotton Innovation Center,” Adams said.

Students that take classes in the CIC room really enjoy it, according to Charlie Klunder ‘20. Klunder thinks that everyone should take at least one class in the CIC room.

“They teach skills that you are going to need as we become a more technological based world, and everyone needs to take a class learning these skills,” Klunder said.

The CIC room houses other classes such as Bots and Coding, in this class you learn to deal with advanced technology and you even deal with robots according to Klunder.

“Because I am taking bots and coding I really like the robots because you can do almost anything with them, and in the second quarter, he lets us do whatever we want with them and program them to do what we want. That is what I am looking forward to in this class,” Klunder said.

Nate Stiyer ‘21 is in Adams’s innovative technology class and really thinks it is a productive class where the students have all the freedoms.

“I like all of the cool innovations they have like the 3d Printer and all the other stuff they have in the room, it’s really cool,” Stiyer said.

The teacher of the bots and coding class is Mr. McGuire. Klunder said he does a very good job managing the technology and the class. Klunder and Stiyer both said that the class is much different than other, more traditional classes. They said that the style of the class is more free-flowing and the room is a part of that.

“There are no traditional desks, all tables, it’s all hands on and the room is really cool because there’s all the stuff on the sides of the room,” said Stiyer.

Adams also said the class’s purpose is to provide just a creative environment to build solutions and innovate. The class is very technological and different, wherein this class there are goals set out by the students, not the teachers.

“The goal is to provide students with an environment and an opportunity to problem solve and produce solutions, basically to do engineering based projects at a high school level,” Adams said.