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.

The LigerBots are hosting the first of two FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics competition for elementary and middle schoolers. On Saturday November 17th, about 25 teams of Massachusetts students in grades 4-8 will compete in the Newton Qualifier. 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. FREE and open to the public.

Last weekend the LigerBots talked to students about the team, scooped ice cream for visitors, and asked and answered questions about STEM careers at the “Think Big!” event at the Newton Free Library. In an informal setting in the library’s concert hall, young visitors asked adults with careers in STEM, including our coaches Noa Rensing and Jordan Schwartz, about their successes, challenges, and achievements.

Noam Shoresh, a computational biologist from the Broad Institute at MIT spoke to more than thirty LigerBots in a packed lecture room at Newton North High School on Monday, giving us some introductory approaches to analyzing the large amount of data we gather on other FRC teams before and during competitions. The strategy council hopes to use this data analysis to predict how other teams will do in future competitions and to create better strategy on the fly when we play with and against these teams.

Our team’s computer science training for new recruits has begun with a “peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich robot” exercise. Students were tasked with giving instructions for making a pb&j sandwich to a coach or student playing the part of the robot. The “robot” had to do exactly what it was told to do, with no interpretation. It was great fun to watch as the “robot” took the students’ instructions literally–bread was smushed, peanut butter spilled and jelly smeared. This activity introduced students to the idea that computers do what they are told and nothing more, even if it is wrong, and that that computers can’t read between the lines and can’t figure out what was meant. We know our students will take this lesson to heart as they start coding our 2019 robot!

Gregg Mastoras, managing director at Harvard Business School Executive Education, trained student group leaders this week in preparing a 30-second speech that summarizes the LigerBots. Next week, our group leaders will train the rest of the team in making their own elevator pitches, with Gregg’s help. Elevator pitch training will familiarize our students with talking about the robot, the team, and FIRST, making them better prepared to answer questions from judges, other teams, sponsors, and the public at competitions, outreach, and fundraising events.

On Thursday, Nov. 5 the entire team will have training in how to construct a personal, 30-second speech describing the LigerBots and why you are on the team. Please come to this meeting! You will find that you use these skills all year as you meet awards judges at competitions and members of the public at outreach events who don’t know much about FIRST. It’s also a useful skill to have when you’re answering question on your feet at college and job interviews.