Pinewood Robotics has made the transition from a club to a fully funded school program. This transition has introduced many changes to the program.
These changes primarily affect junior high robotics, which had previously been a relaxed in-class competition. Now, students have the chance to compete against other teams in a formal contest.
A Botball club is now offered to seventh and eighth grade students, which will provide a larger-scale, competitive competition. Although it is still a separate organization from the high school league, Botball will provide many important skills that will lead into it. Will Rees manages all of the robotics programs, and described Botball as something completely different to the previous junior high robotics offerings.
Botball is a popular, team-oriented robotics competition that requires students to build a fully autonomous robot programmed to complete certain tasks. The program focuses on providing students a fun, learn-by-doing engineering experience, helping them unlock their creativity, build leadership skills, learn how to work in a team, and more. It also sets students up for high school robotics, as it teaches the students valuable knowledge necessary to navigate through their future endeavors.
Rees acknowledges that it can be tough not knowing how students should start when first joining the team, leading to a loss in motivation. If new students know what they can do early in the program they will remain engaged without any confusion.
Robotics has helped people get into engineering programs and start a passion for creating.
“[I] would love to do [that] for as many students as possible,” Rees said.
With more mentors joining and a designated robotics area being included in the school’s redesign, the high school robotics program is also changing. The team desires additional space, as they currently work in the physics room, where there is limited space to test the robots.
Rees hopes that these expansions will draw more people into the team, promoting the further growth of the group.
Getting into robotics can be difficult, so the Pinewood team will continue to advance how they teach their new members to make sure no one gets left behind.
Engineering can seem complicated and distant when first joining any form of robotics. To combat this, the team is centering on education during the off-season by having students build things first with heavy assistance and without pressure, giving kids the experience they need to thrive when the season does commence.
Samuel Tysganskiy described the time as extremely helpful.
“[The time] enabled me to think out of the box while not having an overly pressured environment,” Tysganskiy said.
