FIRST Explodes in Columbia County - Part 1

A lot happened since my last post. So much so that it's going to require multiple posts to capture it all.

It's hard to believe that we are now in our 6th FRC season. During our first few years we tossed around the idea of starting other teams in Columbia County, but with our struggles to obtain enough funding to secure our own future, it wasn't an idea that we actively pursued. I remember other FRC coaches telling me that it would take three years to secure sustainability, and they were correct. 

Our third season saw a considerable increase in sponsorship and we decided to use some of our funds to build our outreach robot, Magnum PSI. We wanted to find a way to gain awareness for FIRST and robotics in our community. Since football is such a popular activity here in Columbia County, we decided to design and build a t-shirt shooting robot to demonstrate at high school football games. We thought this would be a great way to excite the crowds while building support for STEM education.

Our Magnum PSI project turned out to be more successful than we ever could have imagined. Not only did we raise awareness, but through this project and everything that we've accomplished since then, we've truly given our community a case of FIRST fever. Thanks in part to Magnum's popularity, we went from raising just enough to cover our season to raising enough to finally go to two FRC regional events in 2015. We even ended up on the cover of a magazine!

In addition to raising money to sustain our team, we built a successful engineering technology program here at CHS. Through the generous support of PotashCorp White Springs, our largest sponsor, we acquired an industry grade 3D printer and a CNC router. This increased capability is evidenced by the evolution of our robots while enriching the experience of our engineering program. 

Along with this success came the forming of the first two FLL teams in Columbia County in 2014 - one at Epiphany Catholic School and the other at Summers Elementary School. We were excited to welcome them to the FIRST family and our team members mentored theirs on a regular basis. The community support for these new teams showed us that building a sustainable robotics program from elementary through high school was possible and set the course for something very exciting the next year.

Magnum PSI continues to be a big hit in Columbia County. He recently received an upgraded drive base thanks to our Engineering Technology 3 students which greatly improved his maneuverability. He can be seen regularly at football games and elementary school events, and most recently attended the North Florida FLL Regional Championship where we had the awesome opportunity to meet the president of FIRST, Don Bossi. We thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity and look forward to Magnum's future adventures.



To be continued .... 

STACKING LAYERS II - 3D Printing & FIRST

I took a group of team members to Stacking Layers back in February of 2014. You can read about it on a previous post here. I've stayed in contact with the organizers throughout the past year and was recently asked if we would be up for being featured at Stacking Layers II. Of course we accepted as this is a great way for our team to share what opportunities 3D printing has afforded us.

I took the idea to my students and they got right to work on coming up with a plan for the video. We reached out to Brayden, our alumnus who is studying at the Air Force Academy and happens to be the inventor of the FANTASTAKICK. We gave him some talking points and he sent us some great footage to add to our video.

We presented our video at a recent school board meeting where I also shared the success of the FANTASTAKICK. While we are not able to attend Stacking Layers II due to scheduling conflicts, we hope they have another successful symposium and continue to support 3D printing.

The successes you see and hear about in this video show just how amazing FIRST is. The impact this program has had on our school, students, and community goes far beyond what anyone can measure. I am so thankful to be the coach of this team and that we have garnered so much support since our inception in the 2011 season. It's hard to believe that we are about to reach the end of our 5th build season. I am very excited about the success my students have experienced and look forward to seeing just how far this takes them. I've seen the amazing impact of FIRST in our community and can only imagine what I'll be looking back on another five years from now. Please check out our video and help us spread the word by sharing our YouTube link.

2014 Media & Technology Innovation Award

Something very exciting happened here yesterday. We received a letter from Comcast and NBCUniversal letting us know that we were among the top four finalists for the 2014 Media & Technology Innovation Award. Our high school from the small, rural town of Lake City made it to the top four out of 150+ worldwide teams. Let that sink in for a minute ...

When we started this FIRST adventure four years ago, we did not even own a laptop. The technology policy at the time did not allow us to bring a laptop onto campus yet the security settings on my one classroom computer did not allow us the ability to load the computer code we wrote onto our robot. It was a problem, to say the least. We were operating on a $6,500 grant from JCPenney that got us into the program. I had recently started teaching here and somehow ended up in charge of this "building a robot" thing. I WAS NOT going to let us fail. So I did what needed to be done and we brought a laptop onto campus. The bad news is that I was called into the principal's office because someone in technology saw the laptop and decided that we would be "looking at porn or trying to take down the entire network." I kid you not.

My principal was great and let me explain. I took full responsibility for teaching my students how to appropriately use technology and explained how we could follow the policy and not bring a working robot to competition or we could be allowed a slight deviation and learn computer programming. My programmer at the time, by the way, was a freshman. How amazing is that? A freshman in high school learning LabVIEW and programming a 120 pound robot. That's what we were doing. Not cyber-bullying, not looking at inappropriate content, not attempting to take down the network or any of those other things someone was worried about.

Fast forward four years and we now have a cart of 30 laptops, a fantastic desktop with a huge monitor for computer-aided design, site licenses for AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and LabVIEW, and an industry-grade 3D printer. We've had 11 students become industry certified in AutoCAD and two in SolidWorks. We are an award winning FIRST robotics team and made it to the top four for the Media & Technology Innovation Award. This might actually mean more to me than any other honor or award we've accomplished. We've worked so hard to get here and I am so proud of my students for their entry.

Don't get me wrong, great things are happening in our district and there are folks working to improve our level of technology every day. I am very grateful for them and look forward to seeing the continued advancement in our district. I hope this award serves as a great piece of evidence for the positive impact social media and technology can have. I think it is important to let the world know what great things are going on here. That's part of the reason I maintain this blog as well as a presence on Facebook and Twitter. That's why I get written permission from all of my student's parents to use their photos on the internet. If we don't tell the world how far we've come and what great things we are accomplishing then we leave our public image up to the naysayers, and that will simply not do.

See below for a copy of the letter we received and our award submission.

ETA: Congratulations to the winners - The Holy Cows.

2014 Orlando Regional

It was another successful build season for GET SMART. We now have our fourth regional under our belt. CHIEF performed very well, as did our drivers. We seeded in the top 8 to become alliance captains for the finals. We teamed up with Chaos (1421) and Octopirates (3502) and enjoyed working with both teams. Gracious professionalism all around. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll leave you with some photo highlights of competition.

Team Spirit

Mayken & Dr. Westra, ready for day 1

Check out alliance #7

Botley came to the Orlando Regional

Display of our awesome graphic design work over the years

Pit at competition

Bumper Captain awaiting his turn with the bot

Tim & Shawn putting bumpers on in preparation for our first match

Stacking Layers @ FSU

A couple weeks ago I took seven of my seniors to Stacking Layers, a 3D printing symposium at Florida State University. It was a fantastic day for us all. We learned about the different areas of study 3D printing is impacting and how it is changing the world. There were quite a few printers working away while we were there and we were able to see them in action. The presenters were dynamic and kept us on the edge of our seats. We even shed a few tears when we learned of a little girl and her 3d printed "magic arms." We learned about the software programs Rhino and Grasshopper and were all drooling over them by the end of the session.

Harris from Lulzbot was very informative and we enjoyed talking with him.

I enjoyed watching my students interact with the exhibitors and presenters. They were great representatives of Columbia High School and were actively engaged the entire time. We brought many new ideas back to school with us and I'm sure this trip will have a lasting impression on us all. In fact, the organizers were so excited to see high school students at this event that they pulled me aside and gave me a bit of fantastic news: they were going to send us a Cube 3D printer. Then, after the Rhino presentation, they decided to give us that software as well. They were so entertained by my students' reaction to the Rhino demonstration they worked out a way to give us that too.

Cube

I was surprised and entertained by the artistic side of 3D printing. We saw toys and even pottery being printed before our eyes. The wide variety of printing material was also interesting.

3D Printed Pottery ... who knew?

Bendable Wood

It was an amazing day with some awesome students and I'm so glad my principal supported my idea of taking this group to Stacking Layers. I hope this event becomes an annual thing so I can take another group next year. I love seeing the faces of my students light up with possibilities when they learn about new technology and applications. This is a great group with a bright future and I hope this day will stand out for them when they think back to their senior year. I'm pretty sure I saw sparks of the "I know what I want to do with my life" variety.

You can see a video montage Rhino Fab Studio put together here. Look for the GET SMART shirts near the end. :)

We visited the stadium after the event.

3D Printed Brain Gear

Meet CHIEF

Well folks, we did it again. I'm so proud of this team. This is definitely our best machine yet. We finished the bot early enough to get some decent driving practice in and we are hoping that pays off at competition.

Championship

Hope

In

Engineered

Form 

We had a little fun after bag & tag. Can you see what we spelled?