LIGHT UP THE NIGHT 2019
Demoing and spreading STEM in our community
Date: 12/06/19
Our city, Novi, has an annual event called Light Up the Night. This is where the city comes together as a community to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season together. We decorated our practice robot as Santa’s sleigh and let people drive it around on an obstacle course marked out with tape. It was a hit with the little kids, with about 200 kids driving our robot. We also talked about FIRST to many enthusiastic people, telling them about how to join and where to get more information. Another Novi team, the Circuit Breakers, wanted to demonstrate their robot at the event too, but the city could not let them have a separate demo, so we invited them to share our space. We had a ton of fun going around and seeing the other booths and performances. This is one of our fun outreach events. |
Demo at Brickworld 2019, Novi
Date: 09/21/19
Brickworld events embraces the educational and inspirational value of the LEGO Brick. They present a room full of incredible displays built by LEGO fans, hobbyists, as labors of love. The purpose of the show is to inspire kids and adults to go build something of their own. This year we were invited to demo at the Novi event along with our high school robotics team and a FLL. We brought our boards and talked about FIRST and FTC to people and we also let people drive our robot around. We also talked to the Piggy-Rats, and FLL team about FTC and what to expect when they move from FLL to FTC, We talked to the people around us about FIRST. It was a fun experience for us, and we were able to promote FIRST, with many people saying that they were interested in the program. |
Demo at Detroit Public Schools Back to School Fair
Date: 08/17/19
We were invited to the Detroit Public Schools Back to School Expo at the Randolph Technical Center. We had a great time talking to all the parents and kids who wanted to join FIRST and FTC. We told them about all the programs, telling them which one is right for them. We partnered with Frog Force and another FRC team from one of the Detroit Public Schools High Schools. Together, we set up a table outside on the sidewalk and answered the questions of those passing by. Not only did many families with kids walk by, but we also got a few groups of adults who work in the DPS school system. We explained to them what the program is and all it has to offer. The main goal of this outreach was to get new FTC teams started in the Detroit area. Seeing as how interested some of the people were with the whole program and the idea of joining an FTC team, it is possible to assume that there will be some more new teams in the Detroit area. |
Presentation at Univ of Michigan - WISE camp
Date: 06/18/19
University of Michigan holds several different camps for Kids of all ages during summer. One such camp is the WISE camp – run by Women in Science ,Technology AND Engineering association. This is a STEM camp for girls. We were invited to present to them. We prepared a brief 15 minute presentation which took them through our last season, all the fun we have had as well as the design process, building and some cool CAD stuff. We also brought all our boards and one of the games which we had developed last season with the Rover Ruckus field and our robot and allowed the participants to drive our robot around. We had two different groups come in one after the other. We also let the girls drive our robot, which turned out to be the most exciting part for the participants. In all we all had fun promoting FIRST and FTC to both the group of campers. |
NBot Town hall Meeting
Date: 05/29/19
Every year, our highschool FRC team, Frog Force, hosts a Novi Robotics Info Night event called NBOT. The goal of NBOT is to reach out to kids in the Novi School district and get them interested in joining FIRST. This year, along with setting up a table booth to answer questions and talk to people, we also set up a Rover Ruckus field to drive our robot around. We also let the kids who were visiting drive our robot around and get more interested in robotics. Around 100 people drove our robot at this event. At our table, we brought people and talked to them about FIRST and FTC. We explained how the building system work and how teams can use resources like CAD to help design their robots. We also explained how the programming works and explained that FIRST is more than robots, and talked about our outreaches and how teams can reach out to professionals in the community, do community service, spread the word of FIRST, mentor other teams and much more. After all of this, many kids asked how they could join robotics in the future and were very excited to be starting in the FIRST program. |