Our mission is Growing FIRST in the Stateline area by Teaching Engineering to Kids, and we continue to work in this area. This year we have been to multiple outreach events, and are planning more for the future. We went to an FRC event, and raised money for cancer research at a Relay for Life at a local high school. We are planning to hold an FLL Bootcamp in August to teach starting teams everything they need to know for a successful season. We are also working on becoming a member of the FIRST Ladies organization. We will be holding some of their events at our facility. We are proud of everything we do in our community to Teach Engineering to Kids

Garrett mentors the FLL team Team 2×4, a team he was on for four years before he came to FTC. It is a team of four middle schoolers.

Building FIRST in the Stateline

One unique way we are doing outreach is to invite local technology teachers to attend a practice. By showing how a team functions and what practices are like, we hope to teach them about FIRST and make it easier for them to see how they could have a team at their school. So far we’ve had one teacher attend a practice but reached out to 6. Mrs. Scott got to see us connect with a professional over Zoom, spent time talking with our business team, watched the robot perform on the field, and even helped the build team work through a problem they were having with the arm. Her parting comments were that she wanted to see how this incredible program could happen at her school. We are still trying to reach out to more teachers in the area to grow the Stateline into a hub of first teams.

Advocacy Day and Effects

For the first part of the day we listened to lectures ranging from “How a bill becomes law” to “How to lead a good meeting”. We learned a lot about advocating the DPI grant and what it is, who it’s for and the faults in it’s system. A shocking fact was that the amount asked for was over 100,000 over the cap! This is with only with 166 out of the almost 500 FIRST teams in Wi applying. Our universal ask was to raise the cap for the DPI grant from a 500,000 to 750,000. Something our team also advocated for was lowering the required age to 4th grade to include all FLL teams in the grant including our sister team 2×4 who attending advocacy, this was secondary ask though. Something that we did as part of advocating was to inform. It is very important to read the room, if the senators are not to excited, you should make them excited about robotics instead of asking for the money. Make them excited about first! 

The second part of the day we actually advocated, we now have the support of 2 senators and 2 representatives, we are also expecting a visit from both the representatives from Clinton and Beloit, who are very excited about stem. We mainly talked about key details, such as how much these teams need the money because they might not have sponsors to start  in there area. We also talked about how much of a blessing this would be to teams that are trying to start up. We shared some statistics and personal stories.  It was a completely new experience to all of us and a definitely a great learning experience.

After FIRST advocacy day, we invited the Senators and Representatives that we talked with to come to a practice. Senator Mark Spreitzer and Representative Clinton Anderson came to one of our practices. They judged our presentation, asked us questions and even got to drive our robot.

Scout Event

Both of the business team members are scouts. We thought about hosting an event to expose scouts robotics. The scouts also have badges the involve robotics. This would work for mutual benefit for both  organizations.

Isaac and Rodrigo were a part of the build team in the outreach event. They talked about what the robot needs to function and be stabilized, such as, sensors, wheels, and a program (which the kids would learn later on). And what different kinds of sensors and many other things like what’s the difference and what they can do. Or what you could add to the robot, so it can do a lot more than just move around.

Katherine and Xavier were on the designing team. They talked about the engineering process and went over what a robot is. They had them going over situations if they’re robot design didn’t work. We had them go through the steps understanding what it takes to design, make, and program a robot. Even if some of the robots they designed were a little out there! 

Garrett and Loretta were on the programming team.  They talked about pseudocode and how to use loops in code.  The kids coded an EV3 to move in a square, which allowed them to learn about turns, as well as drive straight commands.  

Jordan and Carl were on the drive team.  Jordan 3D printed little turtle trophies for the best driver from each troop to embrace cooperition and fun.  The scouts drove the FTC robot on the playing field seeing if they could avoid the junctions and drive around the entire field. They had a blast and loved swerving around and into the poles!

2023-2024 Outreach

Relay for Life

Relay For Life is a special event honoring cancer survivors and those that have passed on from this illness. We attended one of these events held at Beloit Memorial High school. Turtle Tek had a booth, and we walked multiple laps with our robot remembering those diagnosed with cancer. We raised the second highest amount of money to further cancer research.

Dairy Outreach

On June 10th, We attended the Dairy Breakfast at the Johnson-Five Holsteins Dairy Farm. Turtle Tek had a STEM booth, where we had a pendulum and  paper airplane activity. Our booth attracted many people with a moving robot up in front. We took this opportunity to tell people about our upcoming FLL bootcamp, and how to register. The Dairy Breakfast was a great chance to promote FIRST and to continue our mission of Teaching Engineering to Kids!

Sky Carp Game

Turtle TEK had a great opportunity through FLL team 2×4 to have our robot bring up the first pitch. We set up a booth. We were able to show over 2500 people that FIRST® existed. We did STEM activities with the kids. We even have a picture with Poopsie the Sky Carp™ mascot.

FLL Bootcamp

We hosted an FLL Bootcamp on August 4th at our home base CareerTek. The Business Team worked many weeks to plan the entire event so we could teach rookie FLL teams everything they needed to know. We taught them how to overcome disagreements, what to expect from project, robot design, and Core values. Turtle TEK did a great job Teaching Engineering to Kids, and the new teams said they learned a lot at this event.