Working in collaboration with the elementary gifted and talented (GT) teachers, the Heritage Tiger Industries coordinated an outreach day where the team met with current 5th grade GT students, who will be attending middle school next year.
During their visits, middle school students on the Tiger Industries team mentored and explained what it means to them to be part of STEM and the First Inspires Community. Dustin Thomas and Kim Thomson, the Tiger Industries coaches, then informed the students about the various options within the robotics program.
At the middle school level, students have the option to get involved in three programs within robotics: First Tech Challenge (FTC), Airbattles, and Get Excited About Robotics (GEAR).
The elementary GT students are already involved in GEAR but have the ability to continue with the contest in middle school. GEAR provides an exciting hands-on LEGO robotics challenge where students must build their robot using Legos to solve and overcome the proposed challenges. Students learn programming skills and quickly discover their passion for engineering.
Airbattles, in collaboration with Frenship High School Engineering students and the Whitacre College of Engineering at Texas Tech University, is a drone competition. Students are divided into teams of 4 and are presented with a challenging obstacle course. Teams consist of a pilot, navigator, and two programmers. The competition is timed, as students engage in two portions of the course, manual flight and autonomous (programmed). This year, teams were presented with an extra challenge of engineering a method of delivery of a payload with the drone. Heritage Middle School won the award for the best engineering design in this year’s competition.
FTC, presented by Raytheon Technologies, is a contest where students are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. Students are presented with a different game and challenges each season and must work together to innovate, program, and solve these challenges to be successful. Guided by the coaches and high school mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles, while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and working as a team. Students strengthen their knowledge of school-to-STEM careers as the next generation of innovators.
After the presentation, the elementary students were given a chance to operate the robots and drones and to learn from the Heritage mentors. The students were fully engaged, invested, and inspired throughout their experiences.