On such a bright Saturday with temperatures hovering in the heavenly mid-60s, a classroom-type setting would be the last place you'd expect to find tween-aged boys, at least willingly. Yet, there's something angelic going on exactly where they are, inside the East Arlington Branch Library.

Seventh-grader Kamran Ali Khan, eighth-grader Jacob Scanlan and fourth-grader Elliott Orozco are building and programming their own robot, which on a scale of 1 to 10 on their Best-Thing-Ever list falls somewhere around a 10.5.

All three have made this corner of the library their personal space, a room for technology that is transforming the way youth in and around East Arlington view engineering, technology and computer science.

The technology center at the East Branch has been up and running for a bit now, but it has certainly hit its stride. Helping matters has been the addition of robotics, the building and programming of mechanics that helps young minds achieve all sorts of things from exploration, collaboration, creation and self-direction to risk-taking.

To the tween-mind, it's just plain Big Fun.

"You get to build something that will actually do what you want it to do,' said Jacob.

Adds Kamran, "It's just fun to program it to do something and then reprogram it to do something else.'

The boys will represent the library in upcoming competitions. All three were part of a robotics class that met to build and program a robot- all in about 90 minutes.

About a dozen youth are at the branch each Thursday for the class and are able to build robots from simple instructions and under the watchful eye of Librarian Chris Woodward. Usually it takes about 45 minutes to build the robot and another 20 or so to program it on the laptop computer, leaving the rest of the class to run the robot and return to make changes to the programming, if need be.

The class is so popular that each session has a waiting list (registration occurs a week before each class but the 12 slots vanish quickly).

"What we want to do because we have such a high demand is divide into teams for our own competition,' Woodward said.

Robotic competition involves not just building the workable robot but programming it to successfully perform prescribed tasks such as picking up things, moving things, etc., against a field of competitors and all within a certain amount of time. The current team will do just that on a "course' on top of a large table.

Jacob, Elliott and Kamran can't wait- and neither can Woodward, who doesn't seem the least bit surprised by the level of interest.

"There are places that charge up to $240 a week to do what we're doing here,' Woodward said. "Doing it for free . . .I didn't think it would be hard to get people in here, and it hasn't been.'