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Girls of Steel Robotics 8th to 12th grade Students
October 2016 |
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The Girls of Steel preseason meetings are on Tuesdays at Carnegie Mellon University from 5:30 to 8:30 pm, October 4 to December 13th. The high school girls are getting ready for the 2017 game
FIRST STEAMWORKS
while the junior members are working on their robot for the 2016-2017 FIRST Tech Challenge game,
Velocity Vortex
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New Girl Orientation Meeting
September 27, 2016
The Girls of Steel started our 2016- 2017 season off with a bang! The first meeting began with a quick introduction including who the team is and what we embody. FIRST was discussed extensively as well as the past and future that will affect the team.
After ice breakers, the junior members broke off to attend their meeting about the FTC team 9820 and what joining will entail. The high school members went through rotations where each member learned about the sub-teams. The business sub-teams include Media, Finance, and Outreach, and the technical sub-teams include Mechanical, Programming, Design, and Electrical. Read more in the blog post.
Preseason Meeting #1
October 4, 2016
The first official preseason meeting of the 2016-2017 year was kicked off by the leadership council with triad fun time and rotations through mini presentations of the business sub-teams. The outreach leader shared the new Outreach 101 document and all the girls were introduced to the 2016 robot, Byte. Check out the
blog post for more information.
Preseason Meeting #2
October 11, 2016
The 2nd meeting of the preseason on October 11, 2016
was another fun meeting for the Girls of Steel Robotics team! First, as always, we started with the All Hands Meeting, then went onto technical time, and finally business time. The team decided to have triad fun time every other week, so we could fit in 30 minutes just for triads without feeling rushed. An important difference about this meeting was that each girl who attended must attend a shop training session with our mentor, Chuck, for 30 minutes. The FTC girls attended the All Hands Meeting and then went on to their time to work on their game. Find photos and more in the blog post.
October 18, 2016
The 3rd meeting of the preseason for
Girls of Steel was a very successful one! First, the team started off the meeting with our usual All Hands Meeting, we went outside to take some great team pictures, and played a game during Triad Fun Time. The FTC girls attended the All Hands Meeting, and then left to work on their own tasks. Then everyone split up into the business sub-teams, and lastly, had technical time.
In the All Hands Meeting, we began with the question of the week, then discussed the goals and mission statement, as always. After that, we went over the requirements and expectations of being a member of the team. We talked about some upcoming outreach events and the GoS Welcome Bonfire, which is coming up this weekend on October 22nd. Read more about the meeting and find photos in the blog post.
October 25, 2016
The 4th meeting of the preseason
was spectacular! The girls came in ready to work! We started off with our weekly All Hands Meeting, where we went over our agenda for the day and our team goals. We went over some reminders and upcoming outreach events, as usual. We were also told that we have completed more than 10% of our outreach goal already - we've interacted with more than 500 people since the start of the preseason! Then, Emilia read the thank you letter that she wrote for the organizers of White House Frontiers Conference, and it was passed around for all of the girls to sign. Check out the blog post for more information, including a video of the FTC robots.
Preseason Meeting #5
November 1, 2016
We started the 5th meeting of the preseason by discussing our goals and mission statement. As a reminder, our fees were due the 31st, so if you did not get them in, please send them ASAP. We got great updates on our FLL teams and our outreach goal to reach 5,000 people personally is over 10% there! Our Sarris fundraiser also started today, so if you have an interest in selling candy, talk to our finance leader, Cheyenne! Also, we have welding training and a self defense class coming up! Our FTC Liaison reminded us of the importance of being a great mentor to the 8th graders and to have great attendance. We had some triad fun time, which included getting into groups and becoming human pretzels or knots! The story continues in the blog post.
Preseason Meeting #6
November 8, 2016
The 6th meeting of the preseason began as usual with the all hands meeting where we heard about the trip to the 2016 SWATPosium (more details below in outreach) as well as an update from two FTC team members. We finally started the EOPP or End of Preseason Project at today's meeting. High school members were assigned to team 1 or team 2 and provided rules. Both teams quickly started with brainstorming ideas for the manipulator (shooter) for their robot. Check out the photos of the meeting and more details in the
blog post.
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COMMUNITY OUTREACH
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Here's a glimpse at some of our events and activities along with what's coming up soon...
Celebrating a week of activities at multiple recreation centers around Pittsburgh, we were invited to hold a robot demo at the Rec2Tech Demo Party at Schenley Plaza on September 17, 2016. Here's an article with pictures from the event
and
here's
the Rec2Tech social media stream, too.
White House Frontiers Conference
Four Girls of Steel represented the team at the first White House Frontiers Conference held in Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University on October 13th. Their
exhibit, "Inspiring Girls Through Robotics," hosted a demo of their robot chassis project with both a driving robot chassis and the kit that was ready to be assembled by guests. Meeting special guests of the conference, including Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST (
www.firstinspires.org), and Megan Smith, US Chief Technology Officer in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, visiting other awesome demos, and hearing
President Obama mention "Girls of Steel Robotics Teams" in his speech were some of the many highlights of the day. Read more about the exciting conference in the articles posted on our website
here.
Pittsburgh Maker Faire
The Pittsburgh Maker Faire was held on Saturday, October 14 and Sunday, October 15, 2016. Girls of Steel hosted a robot demo together with other FRC teams from the greater Pittsburgh area: FRC 2614, FRC 1708, FRC 2656, and FRC 3260.
FLL Scrimmage
The Halloween Bash FLL Educational Scrimmage was held for a second year at the CMU/Girls of Steel Practice Field on October 29th. Eighteen teams, including the three GoS teams, were welcomed at NREC. It was a great day of robot testing, making new friends, eating delicious pizza (thank you, Supreme Pizza!) and snacks, with lots of fun costumes.
FTC Workshop
We hosted our first official FTC event at the CMU/Girls of Steel Robotics Practice Field at NREC on October 30th. Four other FTC teams joined us for an afternoon of test driving robots, meeting new friends, and modifying robots. In addition, our guests were offered the chance to tour NREC by an awesome FIRST friend and NREC engineer, Trenton.
We attended FRC 771's annual SWATPosium in Oakville, Ontario for 5th time, presenting a session called "Creating a Summer STEM Camp". We shared information about the various Girls of Steel summer camps which include 3-day, 5-day, and 10-day camps. It's always a great trip with a stop at Niagara Falls on the way back to Pittsburgh from Canada.
Barnes & Noble Mini Maker Faire
We hosted a chassis building workshop at the 2nd annual Barnes & Noble Mini Maker Faire at the Waterfront Barnes & Noble in Homestead. In addition to driving the robot chassis that was assembled at a prior workshop, our guests assembled and tested the 2nd chassis kit during the event.
FIRST LEGO League Teams
The Girls of Steel mentor 3 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Teams that meet at the CMU/Girls of Steel Practice Field at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) on Saturdays from 12 to 4 pm. Each week GoS mentors work with a team, guiding them in the process of learning the robot game, the research project, team work, and the FLL Core Values. This year there are 24 students on the teams divided into 8 students per team. Students represent 16 schools including home school, cyber school, public school and independent school.
Events coming up include:
1. November 12th, FTC Scrimmage at Peter's Township Middle School
2. November 19th, Robot Demo at the Woodlands Foundation
3. November 27th, Gift Wrapping at Barnes & Noble starts.
4. December 1st, Junior Achievement Career Faire
5. December 1st, Robot Demo at Pittsburgh Sci Tech Academy
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OUTSTANDING NEWS
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White House Frontiers Conference
The Girls of Steel Robotics team is featured in several articles about the conference. You can find the articles on our website
here. The shout out by President Obama is
here! Our photos from the event are available on Dropbox
here.
Innovators Point
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Photo by Meg Hogan
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Remake Learning Pathways Grant
Introduction to Solidworks and Design is a Badge-enabled Playlists & Pathways Project led by a team of educators from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), City Charter High School, University of Pittsburgh, and Sarah Heinz House running through December 8, 2016. Students completing the classes will be awarded digital badges to document their new skills.
The program is supported in part by a Remake Learning Pathways grant from The Sprout Fund.
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