For a three-week period during the summer, students of the northern suburbs of the metro area come together at a summer camp called called Summer Academy. Summer Academy offers a wide range of classes designed to expose elementary and middle school-aged students to many different activities and hobbies. One of their most popular classes is “LEGO Robotics Lab,” where students learn to program an EV3 robot to complete many different challenges. Our robotics team was invited to this class to show the students what robotics looks like on a larger scale.
We first introduced ourselves by talking about FIRST Tech Challenge and the Posse’s experience in it. By bringing in our robot and showing what the robot can do on the Velocity Vortex field, the students were able to see what robotics would look like in their near future. Many of the students were interested in the materials that we use to make the robot, such as custom-made metal parts and 3D printed parts. At the end of our short demonstration, the class asked questions about the team, robot materials, and fundraising.
After we had finished, we handed out Ponytail Posse stickers to the students. Some of them had put the sticker on the side of their robot. One student even came up to Sabriyah later that day and said “I put your logo on the side of our robot, just like you put your sponsors on the side of your robot. Thanks for teaching and ‘sponsoring’ us!”