Outreach
How we give back to our community
coding classes
This summer we partnered with our local library to teach two week-long introductory programming courses in order to cultivate an interest in STEM. The first week was for grades 3-5, to whom we taught Scratch coding, giving them the opportunity to understand how coding works and be creative. The second week, we taught grades 6-8 how to code in Python, allowing us to teach the fundamentals of programming.
This upcoming spring and summer, Ridge Robotics will be reworking our approach to community outreach events in order to further our involvement in the Basking Ridge community. As such, in order to move towards our ultimate goal of giving back to the community, we will be making all of our 2021 STEM Camps completely FREE.
This is part of our new STEMITC (STEM in the community) Initiative. We created this initiative to help fill a void in our community regarding STEM interest and the future generation.
With this new program, our aim is to encourage and inspire children of all ages in our community to become both interested and skilled in STEM activities. Whether it be an interest in learning Python or an eagerness to join FLL and FTC competition teams, we hope that we can increase enthusiasm in STEM among the future generation in our community with our STEMITC (STEM In The Community).
In order to sign up for one of our camps, make sure to visit ridgeftc.com/camps where you can find more information regarding how to register. Additionally, although all of our camps are free, our team still requires money to run, and any small donation will go a long way to help sustain our team and allow to continue more camps such as these in the future. ridgeftc.com/donate.
STEM In the community
Ridge Robotics is dedicated to inspiring the new generation of engineers, coders, and problem solvers. We strive to promote STEAM topics in younger people, a goal that aligns with the spirit of FIRST.
Ridge Robotics is recognized by our community in many ways:
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Recognition by our town's mayor
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Announcements about our team in Middle and High schools
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Recognition in our local newspaper
Global Virtual Robotics Convention
Our team partnered with Vex and Mustang robotics and held a robotics convention. This 3-hour workshop was held to spread FIRST and STEM in our community. We had 2 guest speakers share their experience working in STEM. After that, we had 2 workshops, an introduction to CAD and Python. For the CAD workshop, we taught the participants basics of onshape and made an assembly of a car. In the Python workshop, we taught them the basic of Python and then made a hangman game.
Girl scouts
We partnered with girl scout troop 60697, to help spread STEM in our community. We felt that it was important to introduce STEM, especially to girls from a young age. We taught them basic coding using a program called, Scratch. We taught them the basics of Scratch and block coding. Afterwards, we did an "Animating you're name project". They did this project themselves and asked questions to us if they were stuck on anything. In the end, they all shared their progress.
Elementary Robotics
FLL Teams
We teamed up with Elementary Robotics, a non-profit organization, to set up a 3-week camp to teach younger children in our community about coding with Lego Mindstorms. We booked meeting spaces in our town and worked with 23 students ranging from 4th grade to 8th grade.
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Our team plans to help and guide the members of our FLL teams. A lot more people will know about us as a team, and what we do. We are also training new kids to become future team members on our FTC team. This way we are sustaining our team so when the seniors leave, we will have experienced people that will know what they are doing. Lastly, by doing this we are spreading FIRST in our community. If we spread it around, we will get younger kids interested in technical fields.
Siddarth Memorial Charitable trust
Ridge Robotics has raised over $1300 for a school for underprivileged kids in India. We have also mentored them in Java and Arduino through weekly conference calls.
