This summer our outreach team worked at the Synapse branch of Peninsula Bridge for five weeks, where we taught a competition robotics and design engineering class to small groups of elementary and early middle school students.
Peninsula Bridge is a Bay Area nonprofit program that provides educational support and college guidance to first-generation, low income local students. They work individually with students starting in fourth grade all the way to college, and we're so grateful to have had the opportunity to get involved!
During our classes we began with a brief presentation about our own experiences with FIRST competition robotics, STEM, the design engineering process, and the robotics community, and then moved into our main activity: Bristle Bots! In this activity the students created their own mini robot using a toothbrush head, vibration motor, and battery, leaving lots of room to customize with decorations or experiment with the way additional mass affects their bot's movement. The Bristle Bots project was an easy and beginner-friendly way to introduce the fundamentals of circuitry and design engineering, while also making STEM fun and engaging to the students. The students were also able to get a taste of competition robotics by adding new strategic elements such as pipe cleaners to stabilize their bot, or flip over their opponents. Watching the students struggle, but then experience the excitement of slowly problem solving felt incredibly rewarding for us as well. Of course we had to finish each class off with a tournament style knockout competition, that was the highlight for many of the students.
On the final survey we had students fill out after class, they (on average) rated:
Enjoyment: 9.1/10
Interest in future FIRST programs: 8.8/10
We can't wait to get involved in more outreach programs and future Peninsula Bridge activities
