In recent past seasons, Edina Robotics has had a drop off in the number of girls who participated in our FIRST Tech Challenge pipeline to “The Green Machine”. In an attempt to increase our recruitment of girls and make their transition seamless, we hosted a “Girls in the Workshop” event. This strengthens our connection between FTC and FRC, making personal connections across programs. In early December we were the grateful recipients of the FIRST Upper Midwest Grant of $500 to fund this event. With these funds, we bought three soldering kits and enough “need to solder this together” kits for each FTC and FRC girl to complete. The kits were handheld dot matrix video games. To complete, everyone soldered each individual part to the motherboard which created an interesting challenge! We then divided the FTC girls into groups with FRC girls as leaders to make it easier for them to connect with certain individuals. Mentors Blue Day and David Day demonstrated and taught the girls how to solder and by the end, everyone was steller at it! FTC #11566 Tough Cookies member, Sophia was so excited when she got her kit working, she expressed, “I know how to solder now! This is so cool! I made this!”. Photos of the event can be found at this link. This was a great learning experience and has expanded 1816’s way of recruiting and incorporating the FTC girls. We’re excited to continue this journey!
– by Venna W.