Attention all teams, nationwide and around the world!
Team 204 is please to announce today, on Thurs, Feb 23, 2006, Eastern Robotics is no longer our title. We are now Eastern Robotic Vikings or “ERV”. Now this may come to a shock, especially to the East Coast Teams, but relax, myself and members from our team will answer all your questions that you may have over the coming days. However, I will try to give you a basic overview of ERV
What is ERV?
Simple, ERV stands for Eastern Robotic Vikings. We came up with the name after we attended the PARC and discussed over a hundred ideas on what we wanted to do for the 2005-2006 season, ERV being one of them.
Why have a new beginning now?
This is a new refurbishment for Team 204. From team image to robot design, basically anything and everything is new and we approaches things from a different angle. The mentors, myself and the students have created and implemented ERV in our sponsorship events, community services projects and overall F.I.R.S.T events. Also, we wanted to start something new for this season and challenge our minds to create and inspire what the ideals of F.I.R.S.T teaches us.
Where is Team 204 competing this season?
Well, this season, we are giving the opportunity to compete in the Championship (but I like to call it the World Championship). Anyway, we have students that are new this year and some students that have been on the team since 2004 and they have never attended the Championship event, so we wanted our students to explore what science and engineering really means to the world and to compete against robots from the West Coast and around the world. As always we going back to the Philadelphia Regional and competing with our favorite teams from Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, and of course Pennsylvania. We feel that the Philly Regional is the best competition that the East Coast has to offer.
What is the biggest outcome we experience during the season?
Well with revamping 204, we are also in process right now of using the VEX kits to teach middle school students about engineering. We are teaching them how engineering affects the world and why it is a vital part in our everyday lives. Along this process of teaching the students, we are going to use the VEX kits to have the middle school students create, design, and have mini competitions throughout the rest of the 2006 school year.
What do we expect to learn this season?
Is this a good question or what, ok well maybe not. We want to dive in deeper with science and engineering and how we can maybe turn any ordinary object into helpful devices. We want to explore what the world has to offer to society and how we can change the outcome of any old situation. We want our students to learn from they mistakes and turn it around and fix it for a better outcome. We want to accomplish a lot this season and step over the line of success and motivate the next generation of future science teachers, engineers or even a mascot for a sports team ( Ok maybe not the last one). However there is one thing that will remain constant with this team, we are a 100% student led, student building, and basically student-involved robotics team. We have minimal help from engineers and mentors alike but everything that the students build, present and design is done by “hard-working” students.
Ok, well I think that it is enough for now. This is just a brief overview of what this team hopes to accomplish this season and for seasons to come. If you have any more questions, our student members here on Chief Delphi and me will be able to answer them for you. Thanks for checking out what Team 204 has in store and on behalf of the entire team of ERV, to all the teams, GOOD LUCK!