Team 100 −2008 Chairman’s Award Submission
It’s always the orange. Throughout the years, through our outreach to the community, our networking with other teams, our intense work with creating a robot in the small window of time, everyone remembers the orange. We are Team 100, a team of enthusiastic Woodside and Carlmont High School students, the team in the orange shirts and bright, Dr Seuss−style hats with our mascot, the dancing hat. We can’t go anywhere without being recognized. Even the people at the supermarket checkout counter ask how our robot is doing.
Over the last four years, our team has spread FIRST’s message to the community. From volunteering at community fund raising events, showing off the robot to the school board, to participating in local city parades, our team, dressed in orange, is always ready to spread the infectious spirit of robotics. At least eight magazines and journals as well as an NBC 11 news segment have featured our team or our robot in the past year. Our 2006 robot was one of the designs featured in “FIRST Robots:Aim High: Behind the Design.” We also submitted book entries for our 2007 robot in order to further publicize interest in robotics. We gave copies of the FIRST book to school administrators as well as to the school libraries so that all students can learn about FIRST. With our expressive robot, we reach out to the community and show them the fun we have designing and building our robot. Spreading the excitement of engineering isn't just a goal of the competition season, it’s a year-round effort.
Since 2007, our team has been sponsored by DreamWorks. Our students gave a lunchtime presentation and robot demonstration for the entire PDI DreamWorks staff in their cafeteria. This helped cement our relationship. Last June, we gave another robot presentation to their staff and even had a video conference with our counterpart DreamWorks team in Southern California, Team 1070. DreamWorks animator Drew Perttula has been working with our animation sub−team for this year’s competition.
Our team could not succeed without community support. Local businesses provide donations of materials and food during the building season. Each year, the students on our team execute a letter−writing campaign to ask for funds to help finance our FIRST entry fees. We write to family and friends all over the country. For the past few years, the Woodside High School Foundation (WHSF) has matched these financial donations to our team to help us out. As a thank you to the WHSF, we help out with their annual fundraising event, Tour for Woodside, a bike race. Beginning with the event setup at 5:00 a.m. and ending at cleanup time in the early evening, our team sets up food stands, helps park cars, directs bikers, and demonstrates our robot. This year, at the end of the day, our robot handed out goody bags to finishing bikers. By helping out at the WHSF bike race, we showed our appreciation, helped the WHSF raise money for all Woodside High School activities, and showed the attendees (most of whom had no connection to the school community) what FIRST is about.
In the past few years, we have forged strong ties with several FIRST teams. We have always been friends with Team 114, and in our 2007 year, four of their members traveled with us to the championship. They helped us to program our autonomous mode so that it would function in the game. Hailing from Oregon, Team 997 was a rampbot that performed well during the 2007 Davis regional. We ended up on the same alliance and won the regional together. In October, 997 chose to come down to our area in the 2007 Cal Games. This season, for the first time, we are leaving California and traveling to the Portland, Oregon Regional, largely because of our relations with 997. Our mentors maintain constant contact with their counterparts at several local teams, including Menlo Atherton (766), Los Gatos (972), and Pioneer (668). For the past three years we have been involved in multi−team strategy sessions. We strategized with 972 in 2006. In 2007 and 2008 we invited local teams 766 and 2144 to join us in watching the FIRST kickoff event on the big screen in our Performing Arts Center.
We are always willing to help anyone who needs it. We share design ideas on Chief Delphi, provide needed parts at competition, help debug in the pits, and help with animation. Recently, we adopted a few students and a mentor from Sequoia High School to help them get a feeling for the game and be ready to start their own team next year. “I’m impressed by the cooperative spirit that the students and the mentors have with one another, and other teams.” said Janice Valletta, Team 100 mentor. Several of our alumni team members have gone on to mentor other FRC teams including Teams 254, 972, and 968. We have been active attendees of the WRRF seminars held in the fall. One of our mentors regularly teaches an FRC programming class and two of our student members have taught animation fundamentals.
When the Great America amusement park had their Physics day for nearly 10,000 high school students, our team was asked to show our robot to the crowds. We set up beneath the Top Gun rollercoaster and demonstrated what a group of determined high school students can do with just six weeks and a kit of parts. “Lots of people seemed interested in the robot. We were in front of the most popular ride in Great America, so at least 10% of the people who came that day saw us,” said Martin Taylor, ’08.
We also help out with FLL. For the past three years, we have helped run the FIRST LEGO League’s regional on the SF Peninsula. We have worked the scoring tables, acted as DJs, judged the events, video-recorded the matches, and run the concession stands. We hope these kids will enjoy their experience with FLL, so that they will continue on with FIRST and join FRC when they enter high school. Two of our team members also worked at a LEGO summer camp this past summer, teaching children ages 4-9 about engineering concepts.
Our robotics team has been a proud representative of our schools. In a mailer to all households in our school district, the robotics team has been featured as a strong asset. Fundraising literature for the WHSF has featured photographs of our robotics students hard at work. Recently, a school bond issue passed with the help of Team 100 advisor Arlene Kolber to provide facilities for career oriented classrooms. Photographs of robotics students were featured in the bond campaign literature. The bond passed in February 2008 and we are looking forward to having robotics facilities and robotics/engineering classes available to teams and students from the Sequoia Union High School District.
Our mentors help novice students find which area of robotics can benefit from their strengths. “Some of the kids come in uninvolved, and we let the kids try the different aspects, and they fall into their niche. We mentor them so that they can shine, as well as feeling part of the whole team.” Kris Taylor, Team 100 mentor.
We try to get kids excited about FIRST before they enter high school. When Woodside had an eighth−grade orientation this past fall, our team sat outside the theater, greeting everyone with our robot. While people waited, we showed them how our robot worked, stacking tubes and placing them on our home”built rack. When we entered and the presentation began, our principal brought us in for a small presentation to show off our robot's prowess. Last spring, we took a FLL challenge field and VEX and LEGO robots to Roy Cloud middle school on a Thursday family night to introduce robotics. We explained how FIRST LEGO League works and showed the kids how to drive the robots and navigate the field and the challenges.
We strive to keep our school administrators excited about FIRST. As you walk into the administration building at Woodside High School, almost every trophy in the trophy case is a robotics award. Out on display is our Sandhill Challenge soap-box car that won in 2001. Hanging on the wall is a “movie” poster that we made in 2007, now lovingly displayed in the office. We go to every Club Day, Back−to−School Night, and Open House at both Woodside and Carlmont High Schools to gain support, and our orange hats make us instantly recognizable. Each year, our robot performs in the gym for all the new Woodside 9th graders at Freshman Orientation. We participate in two parades, the Woodside May Day and San Carlos Hometown Days parades. At these parades, we showoff our robot and throw candy into the crowd. Kids get to see what we can build in a short amount of time, and get a close-up view of the robot’s workings.
Every year in the fall there is a replay of the previous year’s FRC Challenge called Cal Games. We have been instrumental in the planning and execution of this WRRF−sponsored event since its inception. We were the host school at the most recent Cal Games in October 2007 and Cal Games has been held at Woodside many other times in the past. This gathering of thirty teams is a time for networking, inter−team bonding, and strengthening the links between FIRSTers across California. As team member Steven Rhodes said when asked if we had the home field advantage, “only in that we could loan out more equipment to other teams.” We lent an OI and RC set to team 997 and provided all the batteries and chargers for another team.
We have always provided parts and assistance to other teams at various events. At the 2007 Davis Regional we gave master-links to the opposing alliance in the final match. We also gave color−coded tool-labels to all the teams at both the Silicon Valley and Davis Regionals. In the past we have loaned tools and electrical components to other teams.
FIRST is a gathering of a select few, a group of amazing people, a period of time when the heart and soul are both focused towards a single goal, a time when emotions run high and intellect runs higher. We are proud to be part of this. We are Team 100.
