Robotics Summer Camps
When Team Driven began in 2006, they knew that in order to keep the team strong in the future something had to be done to reach younger children. Team members solved this problem by providing summer camps for younger students not yet in high school. The first camp took place in the summer of 2006 with twenty-four elementary school students. They had no real plan as to what to do and were unsure of how successful it would be. Little did they know that two years later there would be four summer camps with three levels of students.
The first year students begin with a VEX kit and a box containing the parts of a basic box-shaped robot. They play a team building exercise that allows the staff and student members to divide them into teams based on their strengths in three categories: engineering, creativity, and leadership. These teams not only have to build a robot, they also have to make a webpage and a flyer for their team. From there, students begin a four-day work session until the final day which involves a competition. Winning is not all that is focused on at camp every team receives an award of some sort based on the awards FIRST gives at competitions.
After the first year, the students enjoyed the camp experience so much that they wanted to come back for a second year. Team Driven then created the second level of camp known as Programming Camp. In Programming Camp, the students learn how to build and program a basic robot.
Finally, in “Super Camp”, the third level of summer camp, students get to design, program, and build a robot in much the same way that the FRC teams do, while only adhering to a few restrictions.
The success of these camps was largely dependent on the energy and enthusiasm that the student camp staff had for helping others. Every day for six weeks numerous student-mentors would come together to provide guidance for the elementary school students. In this way the cycle of student-mentoring continues in the off-season preparing students for life in Team Driven.
The Robotics Summer Camps are very influential to the children of Team Driven’s local area.
A new addition to the summer camp program is the Application Development Camp that Team Driven is co-hosting with Cerner Corporation. During this camp, middle and high school kids will be able to design and create applications for their mobile devices.
