Donation to the Middle School Robotics Team
Today’s youth is tomorrow’s future. Tom, the owner of Carbide Processors, firmly believes this and is always more than happy to help and invest in our youth.
About a year ago, we had received an email asking for help with supplies and tools for a middle school robotics team. This request was for a group of young kids that had a strong desire to learn and were very interested in robotics and science. Of course we were more than happy to help.
The boys were eager and excited to organize their own robotics team and compete against other kids in the VEX robotics competitions. The mother of one of the students that had originally contacted us shared a letter about the team and the VEX Robotics program below.
“Last year, two of the boys, Ben and Devin, wanted to start a new robotics team in December but they were informed by their school that it was too late in the year to start a new team. They were told that they were still young, 6th graders and 12 years old, and that they could start a new team in the next school year. Well, Santa was kind to them that December and robot parts arrived under the tree. The boys formed a team outside of the formal school system: Team 351A-The Warp Drivers. The boys worked hard and competed as an independent family-supported team. Amazingly, they went on to win the Vex Robotics Maryland State Middle School Championship last year (I guess they weren’t too young to win)! This year the two boys were joined by another friend, William, also a middle school student. The three boys, now seventh graders, have repeated their winning performance in the 2014-2015 Vex Robotics season and have again won Vex Robotics Maryland State Middle School Championship! Two years in a row! Additionally they are #1 in Programming and #1 in Robot Driving in Maryland, middle school division. To watch the team in action, the boys have some of their robot matches posted on their YouTube channel (Vex351A): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMnULnhHnLXjEklvBWy0_g
Needless to say, we are all very proud of our kids!
[We’re pretty proud of these young kids too]
The VEX Robotics program, which is a part of the REC Foundation (http://www.roboticseducation.org/), is an incredible program that fosters STEM in the community, inside and outside of schools. The obvious aspects are engineering and programming but it also teaches kids to present their work to adult judges and to learn to communicate with their peers, since the kids have to figure out how to work together (and against each other!) on the competition field. The 2015 VEX Robotics World Championship Middle School Division information can be found at http://www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/vex-robotics-competition/re-vrc-15-1983.html. It will be held in Louiseville, Kentucky at the Exposition Center and at the same time, the Elementary, High School, and University divisions will also be running. There will be over 4,000 kids from all over the world competing …. and about a zillion parents and teachers will be present!”
Elizabeth thanked us for our “generous support”, but we were truly grateful and honored to be able to help out such a great program.
The VEX Robotics teams often use hex keys (like the Bondus 5/64″ hex keys, or the Bondhus 3/32″ hex keys) to construct their robots. We had made a donation of hex keys and Edge Eyewear safety glasses to the kids in the VEX program. Thank you Elizabeth for sharing your story and for allowing us to be a part of it.
Tags: bondhus hex keys, robotics
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