Aragon Robotics recognizes the value of FIRST beyond just robots. Our team has existed for nineteen years, and in that time, our priorities have shifted based on the team leadership and available resources. This includes our 2015 discontinuation of FRC 840 in exchange for three FTC teams, and our 2018 decision to rejoin the FRC community and keep FTC 4345. Since 2018, one of our biggest team priorities has been outreach. Our location at Aragon High School in San Mateo gives us access to a fantastic tech community: not only do we have some of the greatest tech companies in the world as neighbors, but we also have a STEM-focused school and a community eager for tech exposure.
The questions that guide our outreach efforts are “What can you learn from us?” and “What can we learn from you?” Based on these educational principles, we divide our outreach under four sections: Tech Industry Community, School Community, FIRST Community, and Local Community. Our goal is to reach as many people as possible, so each of our 59 members is required to participate in outreach. We participate in a wide variety of events to impact a broader group of people, and also to allow our members to participate in a variety of ways.
In the Tech Industry Community, we focus on inspiring our members to pursue STEM careers and showing them diverse pathways to their goals. With field trips to companies like Intuitive Surgical and Denali Therapeutics, our members are exposed to diverse applications of robotics and science in industry. Through demonstrations at sponsoring companies, our members are able to build relationships with our sponsors as well as learn how to present professionally.
At our school, we focus on building our team’s recognition. We share announcements with the student body regularly, in addition to updating bulletin board, posters, and trophy cases on campus. We demonstrate our robots at Club Fair, Expo Night, and Open House to ensure our community knows what we are doing. This also helps us recruit new members each year.
In the FIRST Community, we collaborate with teams near us and reach out to teams far away. Our new program, FIRSTWorldSolutions, works to connect the international FIRST community—our goal is to videochat with 20 FIRST teams from 20 countries. As of September, we have interacted with six teams from around the world. We also engage on social media with the #FIRSTLikeAGirl program, encouraging girls to pursue STEM activities.
A majority of our outreach is in our Local Community. With our self-developed SCOUTreach curriculums, we have held workshops with over 10 Girl Scout troops. We demonstrate robots yearly at the Bay Area Maker Faire and San Mateo County Faire. Other events we did in 2019 include Night of Robots with 53 elementary schoolers, four middle school recruitment presentations, a materials drive with City Council members, a 6-week python course at a local library, and much more.
Here is a list of some of the outreach we did between 2018 and 2020 school year.
The questions that guide our outreach efforts are “What can you learn from us?” and “What can we learn from you?” Based on these educational principles, we divide our outreach under four sections: Tech Industry Community, School Community, FIRST Community, and Local Community. Our goal is to reach as many people as possible, so each of our 59 members is required to participate in outreach. We participate in a wide variety of events to impact a broader group of people, and also to allow our members to participate in a variety of ways.
In the Tech Industry Community, we focus on inspiring our members to pursue STEM careers and showing them diverse pathways to their goals. With field trips to companies like Intuitive Surgical and Denali Therapeutics, our members are exposed to diverse applications of robotics and science in industry. Through demonstrations at sponsoring companies, our members are able to build relationships with our sponsors as well as learn how to present professionally.
At our school, we focus on building our team’s recognition. We share announcements with the student body regularly, in addition to updating bulletin board, posters, and trophy cases on campus. We demonstrate our robots at Club Fair, Expo Night, and Open House to ensure our community knows what we are doing. This also helps us recruit new members each year.
In the FIRST Community, we collaborate with teams near us and reach out to teams far away. Our new program, FIRSTWorldSolutions, works to connect the international FIRST community—our goal is to videochat with 20 FIRST teams from 20 countries. As of September, we have interacted with six teams from around the world. We also engage on social media with the #FIRSTLikeAGirl program, encouraging girls to pursue STEM activities.
A majority of our outreach is in our Local Community. With our self-developed SCOUTreach curriculums, we have held workshops with over 10 Girl Scout troops. We demonstrate robots yearly at the Bay Area Maker Faire and San Mateo County Faire. Other events we did in 2019 include Night of Robots with 53 elementary schoolers, four middle school recruitment presentations, a materials drive with City Council members, a 6-week python course at a local library, and much more.
Here is a list of some of the outreach we did between 2018 and 2020 school year.
- Developed original curriculum for Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts grades K-8 to learn about robotics, do some programming, play games, prototype, drive, etc. Hosted 25 events, mostly on our school campus.
- Taught a 6-week Python programming class at the Foster City library
- Participated in and did demos at school events (club fair, expo night, open house, etc)
- Demoed for three days at the San Mateo County Fair
- Presented our team at the Bay Area Maker Faire in the FIRST tent
- Mentored a local middle school's drone-building team in their competition
- Regularly Skyped an FTC team from Romania (BoogeyBots)
- Visited three local feeder middle schools for recruitment (and let them drive)
- Organized a Prototyping Materials Drive with the Foster City Council members
- Hosted 50 students at Night of Robots event in collaboration with BrainVyne
- Did a demo at a local elementary school's science fair
- #FIRSTLikeAGirl campaign and videos
- Developed our social media, including Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter
