On Monday, March 23th, from 3:00 to 4:30 PM, four members of the AYLUS Roslyn branch visited Roslyn East Hills Elementary School to participate in an intramural introducing robotics to elementary schoolers. The purpose of this visit was to teach and inspire kids about robotics and to spread awareness of robotics programs the students can participate in.
When we first arrived, we introduced ourselves and rearranged the room to allow for some future activities we were planning to do. We then began our presentation, in which we explained what robots were. Since most of the students in the workshop were in a robotics class, we mostly focused on expanding their understanding of what a robot could do and the engineering behind making one. The teacher was very helpful and supportive, tying back our presentation with the things her students were learning in class, and managing her students when they got a little bit rowdy.
Next, we introduced the students to some robotics competitions they could participate in, both currently and in the future, such as lego robotics, first robotics, and vex. We showcased some cool robots, explained past games, and answered many insightful questions the students had, such as if certain designs they had just thought of would be effective. We also explained how the example robots we brought in worked and how they were designed, such as how they played the game and moved around.
Finally, we let the kids drive the robots around. However, one of the radios on the robot stopped working, so instead of having 2 robots being driven around at once, only one could be driven at a time. Despite this, we were still able to give every student the opportunity to drive the robots around, however we didn’t have enough time to do some of the other activities we had planned. In the end, we helped rearrange and clean the room, and the students helped us pack away our robots.
Overall, the visit was a very positive experience for both the volunteers and the students. We were able to share something we had spent so much time on, and hopefully inspire the students to do the same. We are looking forward to doing something similar again.
Volunteers : Miles Hu (1.5 Hours), Kayden Cheng (1.5 Hours), Eric Xiong (1.5 Hours), Brian Xiong(1.5 Hours)
Reporter: Brian Xiong
