Team Outreach
Tamil Nadu, India
Over the summer, Adrien decided to bring his spirit for robotics to India, where he visited a study center in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu located in India. Many students came during the week for help with homework such as math and science. We decided to host a few free sessions there that the students could participate in. We settled on 6 outreach sessions that spanned 2 weeks. The children’s ages ranged from preschool age to 12th grade, so we had to adapt the information for each age range. The younger students from preschool to 5th focused more on simple structures and basic programming, whereas the older students learned more complex mechanisms and got to dive into deeper programming. The feedback was amazing and it was exciting to see even more kids come back the second week and learn about the future. The experience was rewarding and truly inspiring.
Our MC2 Summer Camp
This summer, in order to expand STEM in our local community, MC2 Robotics decided to establish a weeklong summer camp for children ages 8 to 13. We thought this would be a great opportunity for young children to learn about STEM and make an increase in interest for STEM in their future. We were able to stimulate widespread interest into the camp, and 8 children signed up for our inaugural event. We kept costs low so that this would be an available opportunity for all children regardless of their financial status. It was great to see that the children really had a passion for building, as it was our goal to inspire children to explore engineering. Each day we had a different focus, whether it be an introduction to CAD or FLL style building. Many of the children showed interests for different fields of STEM as well that we were able to fulfill. This allowed us to introduce a variety of different subjects and see what interested the kids the most.
Library Seminars
We also held a free robotics seminar at Trumbull Public Library during the summer. After heavily advertising the event through social media and even the town's newspaper, we were able to attract a large audience of children interesting in learning all about robotics for the first time. We introduced everyone to the FIRST family, focusing on FLL kits, building using EV3 and NXT models. We also constructed a hydraulic arm to demonstrate additional applications of robotics outside of competition. Children were enthusiastic and learned a lot, while parents grew more interested in how they could participate in FIRST.
Teaching Boy Scouts
We contacted the local boy scout troops in our area interested in learning about robotics and earning a merit badge in the field. We gave a presentation about FIRST and the applications of robotics in the real world. Subsequently, all of the boy scouts were given the opportunity to construct their own robots using an EV3 kit and program and test their models. Furthermore, children were able to drive our FTC competition robot. Again, they truly enjoyed the hands-on experience, and parents were interested in becoming involved in FIRST.
Stop & Shop Promotion
In order to outreach to people in the local community, our team decided to hold a fundraiser at Stop & Shop. In this fundraiser, we collected money that will go towards our payments for competitions and towards this season’s robot. With these funds we can also improve our robot to be better than last year’s with better tech. In addition to raising funds, we also helped educate the local Trumbull Community about FTC Robotics. We stood outside the entrance of Stop & Shop. We displayed our robot from last season and our accomplishments on a board to the people entering and exiting the store. Although not everyone donated money, many still learned about the robot and its different variety of actions that it is able to do. Many kids were also curious about our robot as we gave candy to them.
TLC Summer Camps
