Black Frog Robotics & the Detroit Police Athletic League
What is the Detroit Police Athletic League?
The Detroit Police Athletic League (Detroit PAL) is a branch of Police Athletic League (PAL), a national non-profit organization. This organization provides various athletic, academic, and leadership youth enrichment programs for children in underserved communities.
What is our involvement with Detroit PAL?
Detroit PAL is one of our most valued outreach programs and is unique to our team.
Every year Dean Kamen during the World Championship gives a homework to all the First participants. 2 Years back his Homework was to work with your community Police organization and start new teams. Our High School team in partnership with Detroit PAL started 10 pre-rookie teams last year. This happened in January when the FRC season starts and the team gets very busy with their 6 weeks build period. They asked Black Frogs to help with this initiative.With Frog Force’s partnership we helped start the FTC program for Detroit PAL in early 2018 by training Detroit school teachers with little to no FIRST experience the basics of FTC.
In winter 2018, we began actively partnering with Detroit PAL to help start and mentor 20 brand new FTC teams. Ten of these teams competed in spring 2018 as pre-rookie teams, and an additional ten teams were formed in fall 2018.
This season, we did three presentations for Detroit PAL at the Detroit FTC Kickoff. During one of these presentations, we trained the rookie FTC coaches about what a normal competition day looks like, where to find important resources, and much more. During the other two presentations we collaborated with our sponsor, Autodesk, to teach the attending coaches and kids some important basics about CAD using Autodesk Fusion 360. Apart from this, we hosted two additional coach training sessions. During these training sessions, we gave coaches insights and advice on programming using Google Blocks, covered the basics of building a robot, and much more. We also hosted three team training sessions where we worked with each team individually to help build and program their robot. We are also very happy that two of the Detroit PAL teams we mentored, UPSM Techno logics and Bow Robotics made it to the Michigan State Championship. After these teams qualified, we hosted a fourth student workshop to help the teams become more competitive for the state championship. We also welcomed one of the teams to visit our team meeting space in Novi for programming help and to use our practice field.
What have we learned from this experience?
We have learned so much more about our community and the ways we can help others. We enjoy helping to spread the knowledge of FIRST and helping other teams. Because of this, we love to mentor the 20 Detroit PAL FTC teams. We recognize that this program allows us to help underserved communities participate in FTC while allowing us to share our love of the amazing FIRST programs. As a team and as individuals, we are very thankful to be able to help these teams, as it has taught us so much about gracious professionalism.
What have they gained from this experience?
The FTC teams that we mentor get to learn a lot about robotics. And, given that FIRST is about more than just robots, the students also learn a lot more than just useful STEM skills. Many of the students we mentor learn about time management, given that robotics is a passion of theirs that takes up a lot of time. These teams have also learned critical problem solving skills that they can apply to their everyday lives. In addition, participating students learned how to better communicate with others. Between speaking with the judges about their seasons and solving problems with their teammates, many of the students gain valuable communications experience.
The Detroit Police Athletic League (Detroit PAL) is a branch of Police Athletic League (PAL), a national non-profit organization. This organization provides various athletic, academic, and leadership youth enrichment programs for children in underserved communities.
What is our involvement with Detroit PAL?
Detroit PAL is one of our most valued outreach programs and is unique to our team.
Every year Dean Kamen during the World Championship gives a homework to all the First participants. 2 Years back his Homework was to work with your community Police organization and start new teams. Our High School team in partnership with Detroit PAL started 10 pre-rookie teams last year. This happened in January when the FRC season starts and the team gets very busy with their 6 weeks build period. They asked Black Frogs to help with this initiative.With Frog Force’s partnership we helped start the FTC program for Detroit PAL in early 2018 by training Detroit school teachers with little to no FIRST experience the basics of FTC.
In winter 2018, we began actively partnering with Detroit PAL to help start and mentor 20 brand new FTC teams. Ten of these teams competed in spring 2018 as pre-rookie teams, and an additional ten teams were formed in fall 2018.
This season, we did three presentations for Detroit PAL at the Detroit FTC Kickoff. During one of these presentations, we trained the rookie FTC coaches about what a normal competition day looks like, where to find important resources, and much more. During the other two presentations we collaborated with our sponsor, Autodesk, to teach the attending coaches and kids some important basics about CAD using Autodesk Fusion 360. Apart from this, we hosted two additional coach training sessions. During these training sessions, we gave coaches insights and advice on programming using Google Blocks, covered the basics of building a robot, and much more. We also hosted three team training sessions where we worked with each team individually to help build and program their robot. We are also very happy that two of the Detroit PAL teams we mentored, UPSM Techno logics and Bow Robotics made it to the Michigan State Championship. After these teams qualified, we hosted a fourth student workshop to help the teams become more competitive for the state championship. We also welcomed one of the teams to visit our team meeting space in Novi for programming help and to use our practice field.
What have we learned from this experience?
We have learned so much more about our community and the ways we can help others. We enjoy helping to spread the knowledge of FIRST and helping other teams. Because of this, we love to mentor the 20 Detroit PAL FTC teams. We recognize that this program allows us to help underserved communities participate in FTC while allowing us to share our love of the amazing FIRST programs. As a team and as individuals, we are very thankful to be able to help these teams, as it has taught us so much about gracious professionalism.
What have they gained from this experience?
The FTC teams that we mentor get to learn a lot about robotics. And, given that FIRST is about more than just robots, the students also learn a lot more than just useful STEM skills. Many of the students we mentor learn about time management, given that robotics is a passion of theirs that takes up a lot of time. These teams have also learned critical problem solving skills that they can apply to their everyday lives. In addition, participating students learned how to better communicate with others. Between speaking with the judges about their seasons and solving problems with their teammates, many of the students gain valuable communications experience.