By Don Brobst | FIRST Senior Mentor, Washington, DC
The activities for this reporting period can be divided into several distinct areas of DC Metro FIRST activities. The DC FIRST staff and local teams have attended many STEM events at the local DC Metro and National levels. These outreach events are designed to recruit students, teams, coaches /mentors and sponsors.
FIRST exhibited at the Botanic Garden Teachers Night to promote FIRST, STEM and Technology to science and technology teachers. We had over 100 teachers stopping at the FIRST exhibit to inquire about how they can start FIRST in their schools. DC area teams with students and robots held robotic demonstrations and/or hands-on activities for students. Typically, we have a robot driving activity where the students can earn a robot “driver’s license” which draws kids to the exhibit/booth to learn more about STEM, FIRST and robotics. Parents learn more about how their kids, schools and other organization can get involved. Recently we had exhibits and activities at the “Air Scare” at the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum, DC Office of Chief Tech Officer with its "Technology Scavenger Hunt’, DC Deputy Mayor’s R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center Grand Opening, Maker Faire in Silver Spring, MD and the Trademark Expo at the USPTO. The largest event was a full range of FIRST program demos at a Major League Soccer’s DC United game.
FIRST was the featured STEM outreach program at the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA). As such we worked with about 50 underserved students from DC and VA middle schools. The students were broken into groups of 6 – 8 and they learned to market themselves, learned about the engineering process and to modify small FIRST robots to compete in a challenge at the ITEA Academia Day. Additionally, ITEA members were able to learn about FIRST and how they can get involved as individual and corporations.
DC FIRST Staff gave a talk to DC-Robotics group at the DC Google office. The intent was to get local technologist involved with FIRST as coaches/mentors and volunteers. DC and MD FIRST staff visited the University of Maryland’s First Look and matched up to 60 + students who are interested in supporting FIRST in some way. Many of the students are FIRST Alumni. DC and MD FIRST staff exhibited at the Pentagon as a newly designated charity under the Combined Federal Campaign for the Nation’s Capital.
We held FLL and Jr.FLL training workshops at local YMCA club houses, Pentagon City Microsoft store. These events attracted 100s attendees. They were the two largest outreach events in 2014. We have attended many local county and city STEM events. DC FIRST is a Microsoft Community Partner and holds exhibitions of the FIRST programs over the course of the year at the Pentagon City Mall store. A major FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) training workshop will be held in Dec. These training sessions are used to help new or struggling teams to get the info they need to be successful teams. This training is critical to developing the hard and soft skills of coaches/mentors as well as students.
Upcoming outreach events include the Smithsonian Museum’s “Innovation Festival” at the DC Air & Space Museum and a showing of “SlingShot” at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum. SlingShot is a movie about the founder of FIRST, Dean Kamen, and his water purification system. It is expected that 10,000s will attend these events. DC Metro FIRST will be hosting several training sessions for the various program as the seasons begin to gear up.
We host FIRST Robotic Competitions (FRC) Regionals at Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University and the University of Maryland. We host First Tech Challenge and FIRST Lego League tournaments thru out the DC Metro area. These tournaments are what gets and keeps most students engaged with FIRST and robotics as they decide on whether careers in STEM are them. Also, these regional events offer opportunities to showcase the FIRST programs. We host many hands on activities, showcases/expos the events. They offer opportunities for FIRST alums and sponsors to volunteer and help at the events.
Donated funds will be used in part to purchase and repair our demonstration robots, purchase field game elements for our hands-on activities, support training of local teams, and other support materials. I plan on using some of the funds to help defray the expenses of the training sessions. Currently teams pay a nominal fee. Once critical levels are obtained we hope to financially support underserved teams. We have major FIRST Robotics Competitions for the Greater DC Regional at the George Mason University Mar 26 – 28, 2015 and Chesapeake Regional at the University of Maryland on Apr 2 – 4, 2014. They are free to the public.
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