ISSAQUAH SCHOOL DISTRICT
Middle School Robotic Clubs Pine Lake Middle School Robotic Club
experience and groundwork for those interested in joining Skyline Robotics in the future and have a better chance of showing interest and continuing in this field in the future.
By Priya Krishnan Pine Lake Robotic Club supervisor and creator
Pine Lake Middle School Robotic Club student
The Pine Lake Robotic Club is a Pine Lake Middle School effort to bring mechanical engineering and software enthusiasts under one umbrella to work on missions and improve problem-solving skills. This club consists of 25 kids, mentors, and supervisors who all work on various robotics challenges. The club works on competition problems aligned with First Robotics. For Grade 7 and above, they are part of the First Tech Challenge (FTC). Those Grade 6 and above are part of the First Lego League Challenge (FLL).
JingYan Xu, 6th grade I joined this club because I was interested in robotics and wanted to be part of a club. The club meeting is slightly chaotic, but mostly everyone is focused on their work or mission. There are competitions, and currently, we are working on one of them. My favorite part of joining this club is meeting new people and building Legos. An exciting story from a club meeting was making a replacement for a missing part. When we were building the robot, we did not have a Lego piece, so I made a replacement. Even though it was not perfect, it was good enough for the time being. The biggest challenge I have encountered inside this club is that members have different ideas about how to solve a problem. After some conversations, the resolution was to have people take turns sharing their ideas and solutions to a problem.
The goal of our club is to foster a learning environment for students who are enthusiastic about learning to evolve robots to solve engineering challenges. The students work together on engineering problem sets, including mechanical, software and develop game skills. The students work together as a team by dividing themselves into various interest areas like 3D modeling, software design, arm design, field setup, game strategy, business, and driving. To be part of the FTC, students must give their time, be respectful, show the ability to learn new areas, have some prior knowledge, display persistence not to give up, and have self-motivation to dive deep into areas like design, software, or game strategy. For our FLL teams, we are happy to work with those who have little experience but are eager to work on solving problems and are self-motivated. Typically, from fall to early spring, teams work on First Robotics challenges that are posted by the FIRST Inspires. Later in the year, the mentors come up with more challenges on their own for the students to learn new techniques to improve the robots. The team continues to evolve by teaching their next class to set them up for success. The reason for starting this club, along with our dear Principal Ms. Cappy, is to provide a space for Pine Lake kids to develop their skills and eventually compete in this area. As a mentor, I am passionate about software and building robots. This provides a great avenue to teach and learn. Personally, having led engineering teams building ambiguous problem-solving challenges in the real world, this effort is to generate that enthusiasm at the grassroots level. In addition, this provides
Sanvi Madan, 8th grade My reason for joining this club is to gain exposure to the world of robotics and learn how to collaborate with others to create something truly amazing. A robot can’t be built overnight, and it takes many interactions, designs, and hard work to create something that even comes close to what some First Tech Challenge (FTC) robots can do. I wanted to go through that process and learn what it’s like to collaborate with a team. A FTC competition typically consists of a judging process at the beginning of the competition, followed by several different robot matches. Each team has about 7-8 matches and is partnered with another robot team to form an alliance each round. There are many competitions throughout the year that get more selective as you go on. It works like a basketball bracket; teams keep getting eliminated until you have your final winner. My favorite part about joining this club is the people I’m meeting and the experiences that I am gaining. At our first competition back in November, we experienced what it was like to go through a judging process, compete, and collaborate with other teams, which I found extremely humbling. As a team, we gained exposure to different thinking styles, thought processes, and designs.
9
