Subject:
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Two big robot events in April in New England!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics.handyboard
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Date:
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Sat, 23 Mar 2002 17:52:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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6899 times
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Dear all,
Mark your calendars for the premier robot events of spring in New
England:
SATURDAY, APRIL 6: ROBOTIC PARK AT PEACE DALE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL,
Peace Dale, Rhode Island. Now in its eighth year, this is by far
the biggest gathering of elementary- and middle-school robotics in
the country. Organized by the Rhode Island School of the Future
(RISF), ROBOTIC PARK showcases the work of K-8 students and
teachers from dozens of schools across Rhode Island and greater New
England.
I had the pleasure of working with a number of these teachers (way
back in the mid-90s!) when we brought MIT prototype programmable
bricks into 4th and 5th grade classrooms at the Peace Dale
Elementary school. The RISF community helped introduce robotics
into RI classrooms work even earlier than that, and encourages and
supports more and more teachers as they bring robotic materials to
their classrooms.
The event is free and open to the public. Children, parents,
teachers, and hobbyists of all ages are all welcome to attend. See
directions, an agenda, and other details at two links on the RISF
site: http://www.risf.net/invitation.htm and
http://www.risf.net/schedule.htm .
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, APRIL 20 AND 21: THE TRINITY COLLEGE
FIRE-FIGHTING ROBOT CONTEST, Hartford, Connecticut. This is the
ninth annual production of the famous family-friendly robot
contest. There are separate divisions for kids and adults, but
both play the same rules. Saturday has a lecture program and you
can visit with the robot builders as they make final tweaks (or
finally write code) on their robots, and Sunday is the contest.
I have always appreciated the Trinity College contest because of
the variety of people who enter robots for it -- kids of all ages,
high school students, college students, professionals engineers,
adult hobbyists, toy designers, artists, etc., etc. You don't have
to be a member of a club or other organized activity to participate.
Many come because their high school or college teachers make the
annual pilgrimage. In recent years, the Fire-Fighting Contest
gained a wonderful international flavor, with large teams from
Israel and China participating.
If you've never been, you should go. If you've thought "oh, I
meant to enter a robot, maybe I'll enter one next year," you should
*especially* go. If your robot is partway along, or maybe it
exists only in your head, don't be embarrassed, go and see what the
contest is like! Your robot next year will thank you for it.
Personally I think Saturday is more fun, because you can see
work-in-progress and the stress of the contest is still far, far in
the future! There's also the lecture program (I'll be speaking,
but this isn't a plug for my talk :-).
Info on the Trinity FF contest is at
http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/ .
Hope to see you there!
Yours,
Fred
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