By Don Brobs | 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.
The First Tech Challenge and FIRST Lego League tournaments were held thru out the DC Metro area. These seasons are wrapping up for the 2015-2016 seasons. Teams have been recognized for their efforts as a team and the quality of their projects and robots. The FRC Teams world-wide were presented the 2016 game at the Jan 9 Kick-off. The local FIRST Robotic Competitions (FRC) teams with the help of their team mentors with support from FIRST Staff settled into work on their robots which had to be designed and built exclusively during the “build season” from Jan 9 – Feb 23. Prior to the build season a major FRC training event was held on Dec 12 and 160 students and mentors attended. The FRC teams competed thru out the DC Metro area. The Chesapeake District Events were held at:
The FIRST Chesapeake District Championship was held at the Xfinity Center on the University of Maryland, College Park Campus from Apr 6 - Apr 9, 2016. Twenty-five local FRC teams qualified for and will be attending the World Championship in St Louis from Apr 27 – 30. Many local teams are actively raising funds to go to the FIRST World Championship in St Louis, MO in April. Thru donations to our Global Giving project we have been able to provide funning to a local underserved team. Thanks for your previous donations.
FIRST tournaments are part of what gets and keeps most students engaged with FIRST and robotics as they decide on whether careers in STEM are them. Also, these events offer opportunities to showcase all four of the FIRST programs. We host many hands on activities, showcases/expos at the regionals. These events offer opportunities for FIRST alums, sponsors and the general public to volunteer and help as we try to maximize the number of students and teams supported. All FIRST events across all four programs are free to the public.
FIRST was a featured program at and will continue with local STEM outreach programs. These include the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Conferences, Navy Leagues Sea-Ai-rSpace Conference,,ShareFaire/STEMosphere, American Society of Naval Engineers, Girls in Technology and US Dept of Energy’s STEM Fair. 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.
We also are starting the planning process for the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s ten summer “Beat the Streets” community based events and the DC United’s STEM night. We have exhibited at these events for 4 years. They are a great opportunity to take STEM to the local neighborhoods.
DC FIRST is a Microsoft Community Partner and holds exhibitions of and training for FIRST programs over the course of the year at the Pentagon City Mall store. 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.
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