2020-2021
Livestream with 18172 Uplift Robotics
September 5, 2020
On September 5th, Team 18172 Uplift Robotics invited us to participate in a livestream with them. Uplift asked us questions about our team history, plans for working through COVID-19, strategy, design, programming, outreach, and more. With this format, we were able to engage in discussions with Uplift Robotics and ask them questions about their team as well. We also answered live questions that other FTC teams had about us. Overall, we were extremely grateful to be a part of this outreach opportunity, and it was a successful method of getting to know a new team in our community! Check out the full interview here!
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SOCK DRIVE
December 10, 2020
Our annual sock drive is back! This year, students from around the school were asked to bring in socks and in return, they'd get to pie members of our team in the face! We were able to get 26 pairs of socks from this donation, and we donated them to the Orlando Union Rescue Mission (a local homeless shelter) just in time for the holidays!
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2019-2020
FLL Jr. TEAM Mentoring
October 7, 2019
October 7, 2019
October 28, 2019
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Vex Team Mentoring
October 9, 2019
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Orlando Public Library
December 7, 2019
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Mustard Seed
October 2, 2019
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GO Baby Go!
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Our staple outreach event, Go Baby Go, is a global non-profit organization that aims to help children up to the age of 8 (varies due to size) with disabilities that limit their mobility. They retrofit and rewire children’s ride-on cars to allow them to control their own mobility, and that’s the most impactful aspect of this charity. Go Baby Go doesn’t give the gift of movement, they give the gift of self-controlled movement. Movement is a two-part process, conception and execution. The problem for these kids occurs in the latter, they can envision themselves moving their arms, but when it comes to the actual motor function, their body is limited. We have the privilege of never having to worry about controlling our own movement, but for these families it’s right up there with first words as one of their major milestones.
We’re working with the chapter based out of UCF to host a workshop on January 12th to be a part of the redesigning and construction process to add support and customize the cars specifically to the kid’s preference. We’ll also be spending the day with the families, so we can be a part of the momentous occasion too. The plan is to build 5 cars at $350 a piece, so the total money we needed to raise, with additional costs included, was $2000. We realized that we needed to have a fast way to make money, so some of our teammates had the courage to stand up in front of the entire school and pitch our event. We asked them to make any sort of donation to help us reach our goal of $2000, but the tricky part about fundraisers is that there are no guarantees; some kids might give $10 and others might give nothing. With the help from our school, however, we were able to raise $4821! With this extra funding we are now able to host more events in the future to help even more kids.
On January 11, the Biohazards showed up bright and early to help build cars for Go Baby Go! We were able to build most of the cars before the kids showed up, which was great because once they got there we were distracted by how adorable they were! The kids ranged from 11 months to 3 years old. Once we finished building the cars, we made sure all of the kids were safe and comfortable in their new toys and then took them outside to have a fun race. The entire event was a blast for every single person involved. From the kids to the parents to us, everybody had a smile on their face during the entire day. We are extremely excited to work with Go Baby Go! again in the future, and consider it one of our greatest successes in team history.
We are honored that our team was also recognized in a few news articles by OTown Paper and News 96.5.
We’re working with the chapter based out of UCF to host a workshop on January 12th to be a part of the redesigning and construction process to add support and customize the cars specifically to the kid’s preference. We’ll also be spending the day with the families, so we can be a part of the momentous occasion too. The plan is to build 5 cars at $350 a piece, so the total money we needed to raise, with additional costs included, was $2000. We realized that we needed to have a fast way to make money, so some of our teammates had the courage to stand up in front of the entire school and pitch our event. We asked them to make any sort of donation to help us reach our goal of $2000, but the tricky part about fundraisers is that there are no guarantees; some kids might give $10 and others might give nothing. With the help from our school, however, we were able to raise $4821! With this extra funding we are now able to host more events in the future to help even more kids.
On January 11, the Biohazards showed up bright and early to help build cars for Go Baby Go! We were able to build most of the cars before the kids showed up, which was great because once they got there we were distracted by how adorable they were! The kids ranged from 11 months to 3 years old. Once we finished building the cars, we made sure all of the kids were safe and comfortable in their new toys and then took them outside to have a fun race. The entire event was a blast for every single person involved. From the kids to the parents to us, everybody had a smile on their face during the entire day. We are extremely excited to work with Go Baby Go! again in the future, and consider it one of our greatest successes in team history.
We are honored that our team was also recognized in a few news articles by OTown Paper and News 96.5.
2018-2019
Toxic Taco Tuesday mentorship
This year our school made a few changes when it comes to their robotics programs. Our middle school no longer has an FLL team because it switched to the lower school. This team has now become Toxic Taco Tuesday. Their head coach is a Hazmat alumnus, Dominic Canora. If they ever need anything throughout their season that we can assist with, we always try to be a helping hand. Their research project was coming along well, but they needed help with their presentation. We sent a few people to listen to their presentation and act as a judge does. We asked potential judges questions and gave suggestions on how they can improve. At their first competition they won for robot game and felt as though their project presentation was strong. Since 5 of our members have experience with FLL, we know what helps teams look good for judges and how they can better improve themselves. We went in on January 30 to their workspace and helped them improve their script and make a clean looking pamphlet for their research project presentation.
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Clean the world
Every year our school holds an annual day of community service called Heart of a Highlander. While many students use this day to stay home and sleep or study, we decided to give back to our community. We chose to go to a local charity called Clean the World. On September 26, we separated bars of soap from liquid soap for easy recycling later. We had to get our hands dirty (ironically!), but we feel as though it was worth it because we were giving back to communities in need all over the world.
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Sock drive
Every year we try to hold a meet at our school. At these meets we hold our annual sock drive where we ask all teams participating to bring in new socks which we will donate to one of our local homeless shelters. This year we have finally collected enough socks in order to bring them into the Orlando Union Rescue Mission which is very close to our school. We hope that these socks will help those in need of them and we want to continue this collection drive in the future.
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Give Kids the world
Once a month our team goes to Give Kids the World. We bring little robots to let the kids play with and we demonstrate how it works. We also play games with the kids and entertain them for the whole day. We want to help out our community while spreading the love for STEM to others.
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Otronicon
On January 17, we had to opportunity to represent FIRST at Otronicon for the third year in a row. One of the members of 9277 got us this opportunity! We brought out Relic Recovery robot to show at the table since our current season robot was under construction. We are always excited to be able to not only show our love of FIRST, but also to be able to explore more of the innovations being presented at the Orlando Science Center. We had a blast and always love seeing our fellow Tesla League teams.
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Feeding the homeless
On December 4th, two members of our team, along with our beloved coach, Mr. Dettman, went to the Coalition For the Homeless in Downtown Orlando before school to feed the homeless. Before the doors opened for the homeless, we formed an assembly line behind the food-serving counter. There were plates at the beginning of the assembly line, and we would each oversee putting a certain item of food on the plate as we passed it down the line. The homeless men were the first group to arrive, some of them even being veterans. The women and children arrived after the men. We got to go out into the dining area at one point and converse with everyone dining there. Overall, it was an amazing experience to help people in need
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Quest kids academy
On Monday, January 7th, six people from our team met at Quest Kids Academy, a school for children with autism or other similar disabilities. Due to the small size of the school, the students face little exposure to real technology other than phones and computers. Many of the children there love Legos and video games, so we brought NXT Lego remote-control robots. The students were divided into groups of three, with about eight students in each group. We went into each room at separate times and spent about 30 minutes with each group. We presented in front of the students and explained what our team does and how building and programming works. We wanted to expose the students to information that they usually do not have the opportunity to learn about. We set up two robots and controllers and let the students practice driving before we had a duo do a race in the classroom and down the halls. This way, we incorporated fun into learning. The students had so much fun with the robot, and hopefully we opened new doors to them in terms of interests.
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