2018- 2019

2018-2019

China Presentation - June 19, 2018

At the Dujiangyan High School in the province of Sichuan, China, we gave a presentation about the FIRST organization to a class of incoming high school first year students (10th grade equivalent). We presented to 20 different students who were attending school in China. Since they were students from China, we were able to expand awareness of the FIRST organization internationally. None of the students had heard of FIRST previously or had ever been involved in STEM based competition, so through our team’s presentation, they were able to learn more about robotics. Some of the students were even interested in participating in FIRST in the future and forming their own team. Overall, by striving to increase our team and FIRST’s reach globally, we were able to show how our team and FIRST can impact others.

ISTE Chicago FIRST Booth - June 25-27, 2018

We interned at Wonder Workshop at Chicago for three days for the ISTE conference. ISTE stands for the International Society for Technology in Education Conference, during which teachers and district administrators come from around the world to learn about the usage of technology within the classroom to supplement their students’ education. FIRST’s booth was stationed right in the center of the conference to interest teachers into becoming robotics mentors. We volunteered at the FIRST booth everyday to provide the insight of a student’s perspective. By promoting FIRST at ISTE, teachers are now better educated and more interested in utilizing robotics. Over 18,500 teachers attended the ISTE conference and passed by the FIRST booth.

Spain Presentation - July 10, 2018

At the International Center for Foreigners at the University of Málaga, we gave a presentation about the FIRST organization to a Spanish 2B class. We presented to a class of 20 foreign-exchange college students from around the world; they were from China, England, and several different states in the United States (Illinois, Florida, Kentucky). Since they were students from many different countries and states, we were able to expand awareness of the FIRST organization internationally. In addition, none of them had ever heard of FIRST or had been involved in STEM, so through our team’s presentation, they were able to learn more about robotics--some were even interested in participating in FIRST in the future either as mentors or as volunteers. Overall, by striving to increase our team’s reach globally, we were able to show how our team and FIRST can impact anyone and everyone in the world.

DEKA Robot Showcase - May 23, 2018

We were invited by FIRST to talk about FTC and the robotics program at the Santa Clara Convention Center. We introduced FTC to people at the convention and talked to them about our competition and season schedule, providing them with the various bits of information needed to make their own team. As a result, we gained contact information for possible mentors and other people that could assist us in the future. Even if these future mentors do not live near our area, we would notify teams that are in need of them that at situated closer to them, thus aiding other teams. This event, overall, expanded our connections with the professional community, thus giving us more flexibility to gain assistance from various people and companies in out area.

Stanford Engineering - July 11, 2018

By visiting the facilities of Stanford University’s School of Engineering, we were able to see how we could apply the skills that we are learning now (as members of an FTC robotics team), to the near future (as college students possibly pursuing STEM majors), to our future careers (as professionals potentially working in STEM fields). We were able to connect our experiences with designing, prototyping, building, programming, and testing our robot to future fields of study. In addition, our tour guide, a current engineering student at Stanford University, was able to explain how students apply their engineering experience in the school and answer our questions about transitioning from high school to college-level curriculum.

FIRST Robotics Business Seminar - Feb. 13, 2019

Overall, we presented to 32 students and 3 adults (2 teachers, 1 administrator) about how we keep ourselves afloat as a business. This brought to attention how even though we provide all of our services for free, there is still a major financial strain on our own budget to keep these events coming at an even rate. One of the major impacts is that we also showcased how they could not only help our team by donating their time but also by donating their time through volunteering to help us host these events or (better yet) to volunteer their time with first and foster the growth of the next generation of engineers. We provided them with the means of donating as well as well as providing information to directly impact first through their donations. Some of the people even asked about how to create new teams, which we gladly provided them with. Overall, we feel this event was a success and now realize how important it is to showcase ourselves not only through out services, but also our business model too.

Google Project Management Seminar - Feb. 20, 2019

The impact for this event is two-fold. For one this aids our own team in the way that it has given us new techniques we can use to better our own project management skills. As a robotics team, we have numerous deadlines and many projects all running around at the same time. By observing how industry professionals such as the executives at Google deal with this pressure and stress themselves, we can apply these concepts and insight to our own team and use it ourselves. Additionally, this makes the FIRST brand more prominent with the tech industry. After talking to some of our team members, employees over at Google were interested by what we were doing and were happy to donate their time to encourage us on our engineering journeys. Our interactions with these employees encourages Google adults to donate their time more with FIRST and other robotics endeavors after witnessing firsthand (yes, pun intended) the impact they have on the future engineers and STEM individuals within the community.

Google FTC Mentorship - Feb. 13, 2019

Eugene Gonzalez is a software engineer working at Google who was on a FTC team for 4 years. His team made it to Worlds numerous times and he was kind enough to come in and help mentor us for our upcoming tournament for what to expect when we got there. We discussed everything from documentation, to past years, to traveling to worlds, to everything else in between. He told us many stories about how when things go wrong, they go very wrong and how we might be able to avoid it. He also gave us software help on our new auton system, giving Andrea extra support on utilizing computer vision to map a coordinate field onto the playing area. As for documentation, he suggested having the programmers not push their own branches to the master branch before talking to another team member. This way, they can recognize whether they have done adequate documentation to ensure the code remains readable and to help catch minor errors that can have big effects on the robot before they hit the playing field.

FRC SVR Demo - March 31, 2019

We were invited by NorCal FTC to represent FTC at the FRC Silicon Valley Regional Championship. We set up a booth and told FRC teams how to start a FTC sister/feeder team to aid them in their efforts in the FIRST program. There were fifty-nine total teams at the competition, all of whom we were able to meet and talk to in person. We were asked about what it was like being a sister team and we were able to answer their questions about the creation of a new team. Some of the teams we got to talk to including Iron Claw Robotics and M-Set Fish. In addition, we encouraged students that were interested in FTC robotics to talk to our team over social media if they had any questions about the process or anything else relating to the FIRST Tech Challenge program. We hope that through our interactions with other FIRST teams, we can continue to help each other to become more involved as a robotics community.

Github Kickoff Workshop - Sept. 9, 2018

As one of the more experienced teams, we believe it is crucial to pass on our knowledge to the next generation of engineers in FIRST. Therefore, at this season’s kickoff at Valley Christian High School, we hosted a GitHub workshop to teach the newer teams about how to manage their code, teaching them concepts like version control and how to utilize the Github/GitKraken user interfaces. We had numerous intentions by hosting this workshop. For one, we were able to further our connections with other teams, gathering up their information for later events and letting them know that they could rely on us for any issues they may encounter during their build season. Second, and more immediate, we supplied the newer teams with the wealth of knowledge we have acquired over the past five years, in hopes that they will not have to struggle through many of the intricacies and slight misnomers we had to wrestle with through our own journey. This way, everyone their can have a more fun experience through building and grappling with the season’s challenge instead of having to worry about the minute details for coding.

Boot Camp and Screamage - Oct. 28, 2018

We set up a scrimmage with NorCal FTC and organized two separate workshops (mechanical and programming) at Playing at Learning to help newer teams prepare for the upcoming competition season. The rookie teams that showed up worked on building their robots and programming on Android Studio. Most teams brought their drive bases so our team members helped them through the design process to they could start thinking about individual game elements as well as how to implement them. In the programming workshop, we helped set up Android Studio on the teams’ laptops, as well as taught them basic code, such as how to control motors or servos.

Mentoring FTC KAAR 15162 - Oct. 29, 2018

As one of the more experienced teams in our area, we are looking to connect more with newer teams to help them learn from our own experiences. Through our robot building Boot Camp and Screamage events, various rookie teams contacted us to learn more from us. FTC Team 15162 Kaar asked us for a tour of our facilities and to learn about operating their team by meeting with us, so we introduced them to our design process and showed them our workplace. Through this event, they were able to gain more insight as to how teams work, in addition to seeing how best to get ready for competitions. Although we may not have as much experience as other teams, we learned that we are still able to help out newer teams and contribute to FIRST’s overall sustainability. Especially because many FTC teams have begun to disappear, we believe that it is important to not only prioritize our own team’s sustainability, but also to help other teams continue. Therefore, this season, we have placed particular emphasis on reaching out to other teams in our area to help them.

Mentoring FLL 23666 Lego Warriors - Nov. 5, 2018

By mentoring a local FLL team, we were able to give back to our community and contribute to FIRST’s continued sustainability. The five elementary students attend a school that feeds into our high school, so they may choose to participate in robotics in the future. We were able to share some of the knowledge and experience that our team has gained after competing in FTC for five years with a team that has no prior experience in FIRST. Through our suggestions and input, we helped the Lego Warriors focus on the impact of their speech, make the content displayed on their poster board more clear, and improve upon their physical delivery. As a result of our help, they felt more prepared going into their first competition. As our team was also preparing for our competition, the Lego Warriors were able to observe us testing our robot and practicing on the field, serving as an introduction to the FIRST Tech Challenge. All of the members were clearly interested in our team’s objectives and may continue to participate in FIRST in the future by joining an FTC team.

Quixilver Qualifier - Nov. 23, 2018

We co-hosted the FLL Quixilver Qualifying Tournament with our sister team, FRC Quixilver 604. We helped coordinate and organize qualifier at Leland High School, especially in the main gym, where rounds were being held, and the cafeteria, where the pits were located and teams practiced in their free time. Most of our team volunteered, doing tasks like crowd control, pit managing, and assisting at the practice table. The team supervised the participants of Quixilver Qualifier by ensuring the flow and safety of the kids. Aroshi and Daniel monitored the practice fields of the pits and in the process, ensured every team they got fair practice, and that every part was put away safely. Ryan Niemi volunteered as a runner, helping each team get to the field on time. With the help of our members, the FLL teams were able to exercise their ability to learn from their experiences. By co-hosting the tournament, we hope to encourage current FLL teams to continue participating in FIRST in the future, either by joining our FTC team or our sister FRC team.

PALS - Dec. 9, 2018

We first tested the website at the Piedmont Qualifying Tournament, where we could immediately see the popularity and success the website amongst the many teams present. Since the website is public for all to view, the different teams were able to use the data instead of spending time collecting the same data we were, thus teams were able to spend more time working on driving their robot or practicing their judge’s speech. We also hosted our live match competition scouting data, which helped other teams determine the best candidates for alliance selection by analyzing the bar graphs or pie charts. We saw three out of the four alliance selectors using our website for data analysis, including the fourth place alliance, which ended up winning the competition. The website is currently in beta, but we are working on implementing more features like compatibility between robots and an OCR to make scouting simpler.

Pre-gionals Scrimmage - Feb. 16, 2019

A total of 4 teams (We Love Pi, M-Set Cuttlefish, Tigerbots) that were going to the regional tournament came to our scrimmage. By doing this, we helped to show other FTC teams other possible ways to upgrade their robot for this year’s game, as well as how to do other things like outreach in future years. For example, a team asked for help on how we implemented our passive sorting mechanisms. We discussed the different designs we had seen work before as well as our own implementation of it with 3d printed parts. Another team asked us how we got some of our outreach events like our low SES workshops we are currently planning for the future. We were happy to discuss to them the process of appealing to the school district with a curriculum and the various contingencies and issues we needed to plan and account for. We hope that through these interactions with other teams, we can continue to help them to become more interested and involved in FTC.

Question and Answer - March 5, 2019

We understand that many people have questions about robotics and STEM education in our community. With our recent success at the NorCal Regional Championship, we decided to ride the wave of enthusiasm and curiosity for stem education and robotics in our community by providing a free Q&A session over the phone and online with our community. We recognize that many of the people in our area are busy and do not have time to come to an in-person seminar, so we invited them to chat with us on their own time utilizing our website and phone lines as an means of easy access to information. This was advertised through our school’s newsletter system, where our principal announced our success and event to everyone in the Leland High School directory. Overall, our impact was as clear as the number of messages and calls we got. The parents enjoyed how they did not need to alter their schedule to get the information the wanted to and it allowed us to advertise our team and FIRST to them at the same time.

Bret Harte Open House Demo - May 8, 2018

At Bret Harte Middle School’s annual Open House event, we interacted with both parents and students to provide them with an introduction to the robotics programs at Leland High School--our team and our sister team, FRC 604--and encourage them to sign up for our team tryouts. To interest students, we demonstrated our robot from last season and invited them to drive it; to attract the attention of parents, we advertised our team with flyers and posters and talked to them about our robotics program. As a result of our active engagement during Open House, nineteen students signed up to join our team--contributing to our team’s continued sustainability while also increasing awareness of FTC and FIRST robotics in our community. This event is a large part of our sustainability plan as many of our members have attended Bret Harte Middle.

Think Like a Programmer Workshop - August 8, 2018

The purpose of this workshop was to engage younger students to become more interested in programming. However, we recognize there are special conditions that arise from teaching kids at a younger level (in this case elementary schoolers). Frequently, these children either do not have the attention span to listen to long-winded lectures about coding syntax or are overwhelmed by the constant flow of the vernacular and lingo of programming languages like java. In order to circumvent this, we provided a workshop that focuses in on the mindset a programmer must take on in order to code, allowing them to “think like a programmer” without overcomplicating things. This way, as they grow up, they may learn different types of languages with separate coding conventions, but they will always be able to draw on the quintessential knowledge of how one should approach solving a problem in programming. We utilized friendly “robots” (our team members) to directly interpret their “code” (instructions written on a slideshow) to complete tasks and encourage them to think procedurally in a fun and encouraging environment.

Python Programming Workshop - August 25, 2018

At the Python Programming Workshop, we worked with elementary and middle school students to teach them the foundations of programming through the Python programming language. Our team members worked closely with each of the participants to ensure that they understood how to follow our instructions and use the Python programming language. As some of the participants had ever used Python before, we went through the basic concepts of programming in Python. Through programming a game they were all fond of, they were able to understand how the game works and how to recreate it, teaching them the basics of how the language of python and coding strategy works. By utilizing a simple language to create a game, we hope these children were inspired by this experience so they may follow a new passion of coding. Through hosting a series of workshops at our local library, we hope that we have had and continue to leave a positive experience of STEM within our community.

Leland Back to School Night - August 28, 2018

The impact of this event was two-fold. First, we wanted to introduce the FIRST program to parents and students who would be attending Back to School Night, which would aid us in gathering members for the upcoming season. These types of events have caused a direct correlation in the increasing number of applicants for both of our teams over the past years, so in terms of our own sustainability, it was important to us to hold this event. Additionally, we were able to answers many of the question parents had about joining the robotics program, especially those by FIRST and held at our school, furthering the spread of STEM related information in the process. Second, we also wanted to showcase our robot as a demonstration for the school. As one of the more prominent extracurricular activities on campus, by showcasing such a cool activity, we can encourage more people to attend Leland High School, in turn increasing the number of people we can influence and the number of applicants for our team.

Almaden Art and Wine Festival - Sept. 16, 2018

At the Almaden Art and Wine Festival, we educated our community about FIRST robotics and STEM, by showcasing last year’s robot. We interested younger children in FIRST and STEM in general, and told parents about FLL and lower level FIRST programs that their children would be interested in. Through the many questions that we received that were on the topic of creating FLL teams, it was clear that there was a large interest in robotics. Also, our new team members got to learn how to operate a FIRST Tech Challenge robot and give elevator speeches to promote FIRST. This experience for our new team members helped them to feel more comfortable with future events as they now had practice with talking to the public about FIRST at an event. We are hopeful that many of the people we spoke to will become involved with FIRST in the future due to their large interest in our robotics team.

TinkerCAD Workshop - Nov. 23, 2018

We organized a TinkerCAD workshop at the San Jose Library for kids in 2nd-5th grades. Tinkercad is a web-based CAD software that is easy to use--making it an accessible way to learn Computer Aided Design by dragging and dropping three dimensional shapes onto a digital workspace. By hosting this workshop, we were able to spread STEM to young children in our community, with hopes that they will pursue STEM-related education in the future.The students not only had a better understanding of how to use CAD, but they had a new way of thinking towards how things are made and created in the modern world. The students did not know what CAD was; however, when they discovered the possibilities of the software, they were inspired to create new designs. The new idea of designing a product through an online application changed their view on the design process and the world around them. The students realized the importance of the application itself and the power they had with their new skills.

Saratoga Showcase - Jan. 9, 2019

8th Grade Information Night - Jan. 17, 2019

For Leland High School’s annual 8th Grade Information Night, we collaborated with our sister team FRC 604 Quixilver Robotics to demonstrate the robotics programs available at our high school. We presented the FIRST program to middle school students and their parents by talking to them about the merits of joining robotics, as well as the various opportunities it provides for students. To interest middle schoolers, we demonstrated Rexxa, our robot from last season by showing its different capabilities while talking about its control system. We also helped students get a first-hand experience with controlling the robot by letting them operate the intake system from last season’s game challenge. In addition, we needed to get more members to maintain our team’s sustainability, so we encouraged middle schoolers interested in robotics to sign up for the tryouts for our team when they open.

Engineering Class Demo - Jan. 24, 2019

We collaborated with the Engineering Class teacher at Bret Harte Middle School to demonstrate the robotics programs available at our high school. We presented the FIRST program to middle school students by talking to them about the merits of joining robotics, as well as the various opportunities it provides for students. To interest middle schoolers, we demonstrated the our robot from last season by showing its different capabilities. We also helped students get a first-hand experience with controlling the robot by letting them operate it. During the event, we talked to several different middle school students about becoming involved with the FIRST programs offered at our high school. Thus, when the students graduate, they can join one of the robotics teams at our school, which will maintain our team’s sustainability. In addition, we encouraged students that were interested in robotics to join our team by signing up for the tryouts for our team.

3d Printing Club Demo - Jan. 26, 2019

Our goal in this event was to demonstrate how we use 3D printing in our robots, a “real world” scenario where the robustness and speed of the print is important to the efficacy of the finished product and the speed at which the project progresses. We brought our robot from velocity vortex and showcased the 3D printed parts in use and how they were important to the overall functionality of our velocity vortex robot. Through our event, we are inspiring students to enter the STEM field where they can utilize the skills and critical thinking that they have acquired in the 3D printing club. Additionally, this strengthens our connections with Bret Harte Middle School (bordered with Leland High School). Many students were interested in our FTC program at Leland and how to join/get involved. Since we get many of our new applicants from this middle school which feeds straight into Leland, we believe it is crucial to keep strong ties with the students and faculty and to help out whenever we can, aiding in the acquisition of knowledge in the STEM field for our immediate community.

Graystone Robotics Demo - March 11, 2019

Many of these students have never experienced FIRST Robotics, so we thought it would be a good idea to start introducing them to STEM concepts within robotics. We decided that it is extremely important to continue reaching out to our community, even though we are continuously preparing for the World Championships in Houston. We explained the benefits of planning out designs in a group brainstorm. They also learned how we cardboard out our designs prior to building. We explained the rules of different FIRST Programs, and how they as students can join Jr FLL. The students learned Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism and how to work together to solve different challenges. They were taught the basic controls about driving our last season robot, and they stacked boxes representing glyphs on top of a chair.

Low SES Workshops - March 23, 2019

Our impact was as evident as the smiles on the kid’s faces during the event (as cheesy as it sounds). Many of these children don’t have access to materials like EV3 kits, STEM teachers, or even just outside resources to pursue their passion in building and designing the next big thing. After all, they when approached the school district with our plans, this was the first area they wanted us to impact. Through these series of workshops, we provided them with the resources and opportunity to foster their own growth as tomorrow’s scientists and engineers, letting them question, build and learn in a safe place, with all the help they could ask for. Funny enough, though, we didn’t have to prompt the too much. Rather they were self-motivated and intrinsically interested to further their education in robotics (basically they were kids being kids, exploring new possibilities wherever they could). All we needed to do was to provide them with the means to bring out the talent and interest that was already there.

Charlie Fundraising - Nov. 11, 2018

The unique design of Charlie stands out, displays the creativity of our team, and strengthens our team branding. Most teams enjoy gathering mascots and symbols of other teams, and are more likely to reach out to teams that left a strong impression. By spreading Charlies through sales and gifts to alliance partners, we can increase our presence in the FTC community and create friendships with teams that last. Charlies offer an incentive for spectators and members or mentors of other teams to make donations at competitions, thus boosting our funding. This increases our budget for other outreach events and allows us to host, teach, and demonstrate at more venues.

Graystone Programming Class - Jan 14, 2019 - April 1, 2019

In order to provide more STEM related programs in our area, we partnered up with the SixAnd4 Foundation to provide more workshops to elementary schools in our area. The foundation provided funds and our team provided the resources and manpower for a series of programming workshops at Graystone, a local elementary school. We were able to fulfill our team’s purpose of providing community service and teaching students STEM-related content while gaining the assets necessary to keep the team self-sustaining as well as funding further outreach endeavors. By providing them with the tools necessary for them to pursue their interests in the programming field, the children were able to gain a basic knowledge of coding in JavaScript.

Graystone Robotics Class - Jan 17, 2019 - April 4, 2019

We partnered with a local non-profit organization to help bring more robotics to younger children. This organization was running a weekly after school class at Graystone Elementary School for second and third graders. We helped to teach Lego robotics using Lego WeDo. The class started with a lecture about motors, and then the kids were assigned to build a robot using two motors. However, many of the kids were very loud and they refused to cooperate. Despite these challenges, we were able to help the kids make robots.

Blaze Pizza Fundraiser - March 29, 2019

Our impact hit closer to home this time, directly impacting us as a business and organization. Obviously, it is incredibly expensive to run a robotics team, and altogether too frequently, we run very tight on our budget by this time in the year. That’s not to say that we are bad at managing our budget; rather, it is the complete opposite. We are incredibly tight in the usage of our money which leaves little room for error, trying to make the most of company matching funds and grants. This event supplies us with just a little bit of extra money that can definitely aid the the relief of stress in case things go awry and we need to make emergency purchase of things we have not planned for. Although it is a small amount in comparison to the larger amount of money we get from other grants and means of production, there is definitely something nice in the way the community in our area came together to support us in our endeavors to continue what we do in spreading STEM education and our dreams lying in wait over in Houston. In total, we raised a little bit over one hundred dollars over the course of the three hour fundraiser at Blaze.