[Anne Shade]

We have developed several training sessions here at Tech to help start teams in the area. This is our first year holding these sessions but so far they seem to be going well. So far this is how we split it up:

Introduction to FIRST and basic design strategies
Motion
Manipulation
Motors and pneumatics
Electronics and Programming
SAFETY
Design challenge

We are holding them each week for about two hours or so. We have a lecture at the beginning to expose the students to basic physics principles and the likes. We then have fun activities so that they can use some of what they learned. So far we had them build a newspaper bridge (we had each team design a bridge with certain restrictions and then the teams switched designs and built a bridge designed by another team), mousetrap cars. This week we will bring them to the robot lab here at Tech so they can play with some assembly robots. That's what we have been able to do so far. We are planning to hold these each year while adding several levels to the workshops as the teams in the area start gaining experience.