Spark of Inspiration
William Z.
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A student inspecting a Lego game piece before a match.
Each year, our robotics team, CardinalBotics, hosts a FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics competition for 18 middle and elementary school teams in the Bay Area. I helped with the setup, moving the game fields, building the lego game pieces, and setting up the audio system. During the event, as the Head of Media, I took photos and videos. I spent six hours recording the event, capturing the fast paced actions and the live reactions of the participants and volunteers.
Not only did our team volunteer to organize this tournament, we volunteered to be coaches for some of these teams. I was a coach for the Argonne Elementary team. On top of debugging and helping the team prepare for the tournament, I made sure the meetings were fun and enjoyable for the students.
A goal of our team is to give others the help and the spark they need to gain interest in science and technology. In our club, we host an internal robotics competition, so new members can get hands-on experience with building a robot. In the Bay Area, we host a plethora of outreach and STEM awareness events. Argonne was one out of the many teams we coached for the FLL tournament. During our demos, we take our robot to events (farmers markets, school science nights, library events, Maker Faire) so that kids can interact and ask questions about our competition robots. And during breaks, we’ve helped host summer camps with UBER and Aim High.
This annual FLL competition is the apex of our team’s core values. With Lego structures and competitions that emulate real-world engineering problems, we aim to inspire these kids to become this generation’s leaders in technological innovation.
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Creativity lets me see the world from a fresh perspective, but it’s difficult to articulate my thoughts purely through words. Creative expression allows people to see the world from my point of view.
