Three Schools, One Team: Northern Moore Middle FTC Team

If you’ve been keeping up with the Moore County EV3 Robotics Competitions for the past few years then you’d know that the Northern Moore Area middle schools are a force to be reckoned with.  In fact, Westmoore Elementary has won first place in the middle school competition for the past two years.  With the increase in student success in our local competitions and the continuous development of their computer programming skills, six of our Northern Moore Area middle school students will be taking their talents to the next level in robotics, First Tech Challenge (FTC).

For this post, guest bloggers and Robo Colts team members Lindy Wiseman (Westmoore), Annievette Camcho (Elise), and River Seawell (Highfalls) share their FTC journey so far. 

Team #13780 Robo Colts is a rookie FTC Team consisting of students in 6th, 7th and 8th grade.  Our team is a combined team of three students from Elise, two students from Highfalls K-8, and one student from Westmoore K-8, all located in the Northern Moore area of Moore County Schools.  All club members have at least two years of experience with Lego EV3 Robotics and have competed in the Moore County Schools robotic competitions.  

In FTC,  we work as a team to build and make modifications to the programming and structure of the robot.   The most challenging thing about FTC is coming up with new ideas to fix problems.  Since we come from three different schools, transportation to the meetings has also been challenging.  Luckily, our team members from Westmoore and Highfalls were able to ride the bus to Elise with the athletic teams, but if there was no sports practice, then we wouldn’t have transportation, and that was very frustrating.     

Our first practice was on October 17th.  We practiced once a week and sometimes twice a week if we had transportation.  We competed in Moore County School’s Winter Warriors competition on December 15th.  With only a couple of month’s to build a robot, learn how to program it, and learn how to drive it, we felt nervous and unsure of how we would do in the competition.

On the day of the competition, we did not feel confident because we were competing against people who have been in FTC for a couple of years and had more experience than us. During the interview, we were nervous about speaking in front of the judges, but we were confident in our engineering notebook and our robot design.

When we started the competition we felt discouraged because our controller broke and our robot started acting up.  Luckily, we were able to borrow a controller from another team.  When we had our first round, we started feeling more confident because we were able to successfully stack multiple glyphs. As the rounds went on we felt even more confident because we continued to do well, and we were even the first team to successfully accomplish autonomous mode, which is where the robot drives itself according to code written by our team programmers Lindy and Alex.  From this competition we learned that it takes a lot of teamwork to be successful.

A big part of FTC is gracious professionalism.  Gracious professionalism is a way of doing things that value others, respects individuals as well as the community, it also communicates and encourages high-quality work. At Winter Warriors we demonstrated gracious professionalism by helping another team find the parts they needed when their robot malfunctioned. We learned from other teams that we need to have a diverse skill set within our own team. An example of this would be that our programmers could also drive the robot, and the drivers would be able to program. As a young team, we enjoyed competing with older students that we could learn from.

The competition was very close, and we were excited to be one of the two teams competing in the championship round! The final round was very close, and our team and our alliance, Union Pines High School were one point away from first place! When the winners were announced, we were were very surprised to be named the winners of the Think Award, the award for best interview, engineering notebook, and overall gracious professionalism!

On Saturday, January 27th we will compete in the NC FTC Qualifier in Durham.  We are most looking forward to getting to meet other teams and see their techniques with their robot.  This may be our first year of FTC but we are confident in ourselves as well as our team. No matter what happens at the competition we will always be there to support our team as well as others.

We have enjoyed participating in FTC this year, and we are thankful for receiving the FTC Rookie Grant that provided the funding for our robot. Being on this team has allowed us to build friendships with our teammates from other schools, as well as learn more about the importance of working together.  We are thankful for this opportunity and cannot wait to get to work for next year!

-Lindy, Annie, River

The Robo Colts members with the Think Award: River Seawell, Alex Simpson (Elise), Lindy Wiseman, Neil Seawell (Highfalls), Caleb Sexton (Elise), Annievette Camcho.

The Northern Moore Middle Robo Colts are coached by DIFs Will Allred and Carrie Robledo.  For more information about FTC, check out their website: https://www.ncfllandftc.com/what-is-firstreg-tech-challenge.html

Make sure to follow me on Twitter (@carrierobledo) for updates on Saturday’s competition!

-Carrie

Soaring to New Heights!

From the military, to farming, movie sets, and even the Super Bowl halftime performance, drones are on the rise, and the sky’s the limit for teaching STEM skills with these unmanned aerial vehicles.  This year, thanks to Randolph Electric’s Bright Ideas Grant, students from Westmoore Elementary and Highfalls Elementary have had the opportunity to program, fly, and most importantly, learn, with Parrot “Airborne” drones.

Up and Away in Math!

Ratios and Proportions took on new meaning for sixth graders at Westmoore Elementary.  Working in small groups, students worked through four different stations, measuring the distance from point A to point B at each stop.  After finding the distance, students flew their drones from point A to point B, and used a stopwatch to find the time that their drone made it to point B.  Using their distance and time calculations, students were able to determine the speed of their drone.  Now when students think about ratio and proportions, and the formula for finding speed, they can reflect on this hands-on learning experience!

Flight School

Students from Mrs. Pfiefer’s 4th-grade class at Highfalls met once a week for a month to participate in “Flight School”.  In Flight School, these students learned about current and future uses for drones, discussed drone safety, learned how to code using the Tynker curriculum, and then finally they were able to program and fly their drones!

Carson Phillips showing students how to program the drone to fly.

Carson Phillips, a fourth grader in Mrs. Pfiefer’s class, demonstrated his drone programming skills at the 2017 MCS Elementary Digital Learning Showcase and at Highfalls Elementary’s Family STEM Night.  He describes his experience with flying drones, “At first, I thought the drones were going to be hard to program, but after working with the Tynker app and the website, it wasn’t so hard.   I really like the cool tricks you can do with the drones, like programming it to flip forward or backward.  At the Showcase, I was able to teach other students how to program the drones using the app, that was really cool and really easy!  And at the Family STEM Night, I was able to write the code to fly my drone through a basketball goal!”

So what does this fourth grader hope to do next with drones?  Carson explains, “I think it would be cool if there could be a drone competition like we have the robotics competition.  We could have courses set up like we do for the EV3 robots and we could program our drones to fly around the courses!”

Carson just might be onto something with his idea for a drone competition!  This summer, students participating in MCS STEM Camp will be using their engineering skills to build drone obstacle courses to fly their drones through!

As you can see, flying drones impacts student engagement, communication, collaboration, and other important classroom components. Students are engaged, motivated, and inspired to learn in ways that no other technology will allow.

To see more pictures and videos of drones in action, follow me on Twitter @carrierobledo

-Carrie

Featuring Westmoore Elementary's Technology Club

  

 This year one of my goals was to increase students' global connections, while implementing Common Core in the classroom. Students need to have a voice when it comes to their education and need to be awarded the opportunity to collaborate with others. KidBlog is the perfect platform for beginning bloggers to share and gather ideas. 

   In this month's student feature, I decided to share what our Technology Club at Westmoore Elementary has started. In addition to exploring apps, devices, and concepts in technology, we will be blogging on a bi-weekly basis. Students in the club range from grades 6-8, and have no previous experience with blogging. 

   At our first meeting, students were able to make their first entry on KidBlog, and share a little about themselves. I have never seen so much excitement when asked to complete a writing assignment/entry. Students were eager to share their writing with each other, and other students around the world. 

   Below is a link to our Technology Club blog, and we are eager to hear others responses to our posts. We have only met one time, so currently our blog is still in its beginning stages. I am excited to explore with our Technology Club and share their wonderful ideas and creations.

Westmoore Elementary KidBlog

Check back with us frequently to see what we are learning!