OUTREACH EVENTS
Team Taro has been involved with our ever-growing community in Silicon Valley, and are happy to share our outreach events with you. Our team has been working on spreading our knowledge of STEM, FIRST and robotics with our community and globally through social media. Through social media platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram, we spread pictures and videos of our team working throughout the season and our knowledge about aspects of STEM.
MENTORING MIDDLE SCHOOLERS COMPETING IN FIRST LEGO LEAGUE
Five of our members, who have competed in FLL for two seasons, went to Cabrillo Middle School every other Wednesday in September (in total - 3 sessions) to mentor and guide the rookie teams there competing in First Lego League for the 2019-2020 season. We walked around during their work sessions stopping by each team and asking them about their robot design, performance, and projects. We were able to spread our experiences to these rookies teams, provide our feedback on their projects after experiencing the competitions and judging for ourselves, and host a question and answer session answering any questions the students had about FIRST.
RUNNING A FLL QUALIFIER
Five of our members were able to help run the Santa Clara High School First Lego League Qualifier! Our team did jobs including, opening and closing the ceremony, game commentary, field resetting, score keeping, volunteer check-in, and etc. We worked very closely with the tournament directors throughout the day to make sure the competition would run smoothly without any issues such as staying on schedule. The experience was enjoyable and gave us an insight on how the behind the scenes worked for a large-scale event and our members were so excited since to work on the flip side of the competition, instead of being the ones competing.
HOSTING TWO STEM WORKSHOPS WITH DESIGN YOUR CAREERS
Our team hosted two workshops with a non-profit organization called Design Your Careers. DYC's mission is to provide a single platform where students may freely learn, share, and collaborate with others while serving the global community and benefiting all. On Monday, January 27, we ran a Science and Technology workshop. We spent an hour working on DIY catapults and an hour of Python basics to create a quiz game. On Thursday, January 30, we held an Engineering and Math workshops where we built paper roller coasters and played a math jeopardy game. In both workshops, we were able to spread information about STEM, FIRST, and our team.
VIDEOCALLING STUDENTS FROM ALL OVER THE GLOBE TO INTRODUCE THEM TO FIRST AND ROBOTICS
Our team has done international callings with students from around the world. So far, we have video called several students from Chrysalis High, India and contacted Kunskapsskolan School, India. We are booking calls with underserved students from Vidya School, India, and also students from the Philippines and Vietnam. We have shared our experiences and also promoted the FIRST program and its positive effect on us.
STARTING OUR OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Our team decided to start a YouTube channel to spread our knowledge about STEM topics. Our plan for the channel is to upload tutorials about FTC and certain programs, and record memories from the season. We want to share the experience of our first FTC season with other teams by compiling all of the clips we filmed throughout meetings, competitions, etc. Our team also has a lot of knowledge about graphic design programs, software languages, different FIRST competitions, etc., so we wanted to share these topics through our channel as well. With the tutorials we post on our channel, our goal is to educate others who might not have the same knowledge of these topics as us.
SPREADING INFORMATION ABOUT FIRST, STEM, AND OUR TEAM AT CENTRAL PARK LIBRARY
7 of our team members headed to Central Park Library after school on January 28 to set up a booth outside. We spent three hours talking to parents and kids walking in and out of the library spreading information about FIRST, STEM, 49ers SLI Program, and our team. Each person who stopped by and listened to our short presentation received a flyer about our team and one about the 49ers program and FIRST. We were also able to promote our workshop that we were holding a few days later. Our team had a great time talking to so many people about topics we were passionate about and were happy to receive positive feedback from everyone.
BUSINESS EVENTS
Our outreach team worked on planning and hosting events/fundraisers to raise funds for our team to buy team apparel, robot parts, etc. As a rookie team, we found it hard to find sponsors at the cooperate level due to us being a newly formed team without any achievements, which is why our team worked together to raise our own money.
HOSTING A HOT CHOCOLATE FUNDRAISER AT SANTA CLARA HIGH SCHOOL
Our team was able to host a hot chocolate fundraiser at school on Saturday, January 11. The students were taking the PSAT that day, so our team decided to sell drinks such as hot chocolate and coffee to fuel their hunger after spending hours working on an exam. We set up a table outside of the classrooms and sell hot chocolate made ready to order and topped with marshmallows and whipped cream. The fundraiser was very successful for our first one. We were able to raise a lot of money to help pay for our team's robot parts and it was a new experience for us to to run an fundraiser.