This week the team captain of Israeli FRC team 6740, Glue Gun & Glitter came to visit the LigerBots to promote international cooperation and get a feel for LigerBots operations. Glue Gun & Glitter is based at the Shvilim democratic school in Pardes-Hana Karkur, Israel. Although this is only their third season they have been doing tremendous work helping form new FIRST teams internationally. After helping in Israel and Africa last year, they set their sights on China and America. Their team captain, Amit, came to a LigerBots meeting this past week. After a quick tour of the shop and meeting areas, he met with team member Doug and business mentor Chuck Tanowitz to discuss 6740’s outreach efforts and what they could do in America. Among other plans, Amit expects to represent his team at the upcoming FLL Eastern MA State Championship, to be hosted by the LigerBots on the December 15 at Newton North High School. Then LigerBots who concentrate on technical projects joined the group for a discussion about potential collaboration between the technical sides of both teams. After figuring out how to navigate language barriers and time zones, a decision was made to try and coordinate weekly calls between the teams during build season. The hope is to discuss strategy, design, and build issues to help eachother grow and problem-solve. For more on team #6740 Glue Gun & Glitter please visit their website, Facebook page, or Blue Alliance page.

From staffing and scheduling to the timing for the many events and booths, all hands are on deck in preparation for the coming FIRST LEGO League (FLL) tournament! From 9am to 3pm on December 15 the LigerBots will host the Eastern MA FLL state championship at Newton North High School, along with a maker fair and robot zoo of FIRST Robotics Competition robots from around the region. Along with 48 competing FLL teams and 10 FLL Jr. teams, 60 Girl Scouts in grades K-5 will be hosted by our volunteers when they do hands on activities provided by maker fair exhibitors to earn STEAM merit patches. Since the LigerBots will be providing many of these STEAM activities, we are hard at work gathering supplies and making informative flyers about our offerings.

LigerBots who have not been planning for the tournament have been in the workshop preparing for the start of build season. The disassembly of our 2018 robot has been a sad process, but it’s remains are being used to teach our rookies and salvage parts. Our rookies have also been learning CAD so that they are able to participate on the same level as returning members when the season comes.

Mark your calendars. The LigerBots are hosting the Eastern MA State Championship FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics competition on Saturday December 15th. We are expecting about 48 teams of Massachusetts students in grades 4-8. Also open to the public will be displays of student solutions to real-world problems related to the outer space theme for this year’s game, which is called “Into Orbit.”

Alongside the competition, the LigerBots will hold a maker fair with hands-on activities for kids in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and math.

The event takes place at Newton North High School from 9am – approximately 3pm. FREE and open to the public.

The LigerBots hosted one of our most exciting events of the year last Saturday at Newton North High School: the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Newton Qualifier robotics competition and maker fair.  About 300 competitors, spectators and visitors attended the event–a mashup of sporting event, science fair, family reunion and dance party!

Twenty-three teams of students in grades four to eight competed with their LEGO robots in this year’s space-exploration-themed FLL game, called “Into Orbit.” The teams also displayed research projects on space-based themes. Among the six teams from Newton were the Supernovas, which is being mentored by three LigerBots students.

By the end of the Qualifier seven teams, including Newton-based Roaming Rovers and Day Dragons, had qualified for the Eastern MA State Championship. This state championship competition will include 48 teams and an even bigger maker fair, and will be hosted by the LigerBots at Newton North High School on December 15 from 9-4. Bring your families and come watch!

Accompanying the qualifier tournament was a maker fair featuring hands-on activities brought by local companies and organizations, including the Newton Free Library, Green Newton, Einstein’s Workshop, Empow Studios, Droid Builders, SharkNinja, Hatch Makerspace, and Johnson String Instrument.

LigerBots trained with FIRST officials to be competition field resetters and referees, and our entire team staffed the event from start to finish. As well as doing all of the set up and breakdown for the event, LigerBots MC’d the competition, queued up teams for their matches and judging sessions, ran the concession stand, and assisted the FLL teams in finding their way through North High School. LigerBots staffed many hands-on STEAM activities of our own at the maker fair, including button making, paper airplanes, origami, 3D printing, brush bots, pb&j robot, and binary beads. And, of course, we demonstrated our own robot!

Near the beginning of the event, a fire alarm was set off, forcing a evacuation. The students staffing the event handled it very well, ushering the FLL teams outside to safety. Even with the fire alarm delay we were well ahead of schedule after all the matches were finished, so we rewarded the FLL teams and LigerBots with a limbo session, dance jam, and soccer party!

We can’t wait to do it all over again on December 15 at the Eastern MA State Championship! For more photos of the Newton Qualifier and maker fair, please visit our Flickr album for this event.

The Friday before our FLL tournament the LigerBots helped put together a Women In STEM event at Newton North High School. This event, which spanned the entire school day, celebrated the accomplishments of women in STEM fields with the goal of inspiring girls to pursue STEM careers.

Several LigerBots worked with the Newton North science team and engineering classes to host a series of talks and question-answering sessions by accomplished women professionals in a range of STEM fields. These women discussed topics such as how they came to choose STEM careers, what obstacles and encouragement they encountered, and how they define success. Two of our LigerBots mentors, physicist Noa Rensing and software engineer Carly Buchanan, were part of the professional panel. In addition, the LigerBots set out an outreach table and taught fellow students how to drive our 2016 robot during Newton North’s three lunch blocks.  We hope that some of the students we talked to will be inspired to join our team and to pursue STEM careers!

This past Tuesday a group of LigerBots had the opportunity to act as guides at the eighth annual Newton Inspires, an annual fundraiser for the Newton Schools Foundation. Since 2011, Newton Inspires has gathered Newton residents for a showcase of Newton’s talent, creativity, and intellect. Some of the best and brightest from Newton come to give fascinating speeches on their areas of expertise to crowds of local residents.

The LigerBots did outreach in the cafeteria before the speeches started and then helped the attendees find their way through the (at times confusing) halls of Newton South High School to get to their speech events.

During our outreach, eleven LigerBots had lots of fun speaking with entrepreneurs, lawyers, engineers, and trailblazers from our hometown. We demonstrated our 2016 robot while the attendees enjoyed great local food from Anna’s Taqueria, Blue Ribbon Barbeque, Panera, Sweet Tomatoes, Rancatore’s, L’aroma, and more.

Newton Inspires is a great way for us to give back to the Newton Schools Foundation, our parent organization, which has been an incredible supporter of the LigerBots through the years.

A huge thanks to Newton Schools Foundation, and we look forward to the next Newton Inspires!

Last week several LigerBots met with Cub Scout pack 210 during their meeting at the Carroll Center for the Blind. We explained the core principles of FIRST as well as the wide variety of skills LigerBots team members develop. We encouraged the scouts to join FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams, which are available for kids in grades four to eight. All the scouts had a great time interacting with the robot and were eager to ask questions, ranging from what it is like to compete in a competition to how we deal with battery acid spills. At the end of the meeting we gave all of the scouts the opportunity to drive our robot that competed in the 2016 FIRST World Championship and demonstrated how it could throw a ball with almost unparalleled accuracy. We hope to see all the scouts at our upcoming events!

The LigerBots recently had our annual, team-wide “elevator pitch” training. We feel that learning how to make an elevator pitch is one of the three most important skills that LigerBots students learn from the team. (The other two are budgeting and project planning!) Group leaders that received their own pitch training at the previous meeting helped other LigerBots brainstorm, write, and practice with partners their own, personal 30-second explanations of the team. At the end of the meeting we gathered again, and LigerBots from each group presented their pitches to the entire team. We expect that this skill will be useful to our team members during interactions with many different kinds of people, including FIRST Robotics judges, outreach event visitors, potential team sponsors, college and job interviewers, and friends and family members who are not familiar with the FIRST Robotics program!

Our other important training session last week was in shop safety, led by our woodworking mentor, Jay. We also continued team training in electrical soldering, and had tutorials in precision manufacturing, learning how to cut and machine parts on large machines such as mills and bandsaws. We continued to work on our “roadkill,” a stripped-down robot that includes the bare minimum of mechanical and electrical parts that a programmer needs to test out code. We are approaching our goal of making a roadkill robot with multiple interchangeable drive trains. Our 2016 robot now has an orange bumper and blue bumper (our team colors) and we are completing a white paper on the bumper project.

In preparation for our upcoming FLL competitions, LigerBots spent an entire Saturday assembling the FLL competition fields, with challenge elements made from many different kinds of game-specific LEGO pieces. Students built for nine hours to complete 11 fields containing 20 LEGO elements each (and many, many other parts!) as well as 15 LEGO trophies to be used in the FLL Eastern MA State Championship we will host in December. Kit building is always great fun, and with the addition of the trophies this year was even better. On Saturday, Nov. 17 we will use all of these fields at the Newton Qualifier FLL tournament at Newton North High School from 9-3. There will be a hands-on maker fair to accompany the competition. Bring your families and come watch!

For more photos of all of these events, visit our Flickr page.