Brown County FIRST Robotics is making its debut as part of Give Big Green Bay this year.
- The group offers four after-school programs for local families, with varying levels of time commitments:
- LEGO League Explore (grades K-4)
- LEGO League Challenge (grades 4-7)
- FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 7-9)
- FIRST Robotics Challenge (grades 9-12)
- Brown County FIRST says its teams can provide the thrill of competition, along with team-building and problem-solving skills
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story, with additional details added for web)
Brown County First Robotics is one of dozens of nonprofits benefiting from this year’s Give Big Green Bay campaign. We're checking out what their high school level team, Player One, is working on.
Watch Karl Winter's full story here:
"We are building an intake," Hunter Thompson said, fiddling with parts. "This right here is a schematic for the intake."
You can't tell yet, but Thompson is building a robot.
Thompson, an eighth grader, is one of the youngest on the team — but says feels like he belongs.
"A lot of people just brush it off as 'that's just the thing for nerds,'" he said. "And I mean, sure, it is, but anybody can be a part of it. And you can, no matter what your skill set is — we always need more people."
"Yeah, we have people who, like, build the robot, cut metal, do CADing [computer automated designing], program," team mentor Erik Tietyen said, "but we need to have people that are also passionate about basically any other aspect of a business you can think of."
Tietyen says Player One is in the heart of its second-ever competition season. Students are building a robot that will have to pick up pieces of "coral" (PVC pipe), grab and move "algae" (16-inch kickballs) by tossing it into a net eight feet off the ground, then engage in "the climb" into a hanging cage, for extra credit. If their robot is able to beat other robots from around the Midwest, the team could qualify for a national competition in Houston.
"The thing that that blows me away, more than anything else, is their ability to reason and problem solve," Tietyen said. "The amount of critical thinking skills and problem solving skills that students learn on a robotics team like this is absolutely astounding."
Player One is one of two high school teams for Brown County First, a coalition that president Melissa Samuels says has grown rapidly — from 14 students four years ago, to more than 200 now.
"This is their sport," Samuels said. They finally feel where they belong somewhere, and that's another thing that excites all of us."
Samuels says any Give Big Green Bay donations will go toward scholarships, robot parts and materials — and later, getting the team out of a local business's basement.
"Obviously, you can see, we're working in small spaces, so we want to be able to expand our spaces, and increase awareness of who we are in the community," she said.
"If we got some amazing donations this year, we could do things like fund more teams," mentor Emily Tietyen added. "And, specifically, get more kids involved in STEM. These programs, they're they're not inexpensive programs, and we want to make sure that they're available to every student that's interested in them."
And Player One isn't the only team in the group — there are after-school programs and teams available for kids as young as kindergarten.
"It's really fun," Samuels' son Solomon, a fifth grader, said. "Honestly, I'll keep on doing it until I can't."
"It's more than just a robot," Thompson said. "It can teach you, and it can get you someplace, and it really helps with your future, and getting into college, and all these things, it can really help.
Give Big Green Bay’s 24-hour day of giving kicks off at noon on February 19. The full list of non-profits participating is available here.
