As the interest in science, technology, engineering, and math is increasing throughout the community, Pleasant Valley students of a variety of ages are participating STEM-related events. Spartans demonstrate these real-world skills all the way from elementary to high school.
At the high school level, PV has two teams participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge. Teams have the opportunity to up their ranking and gain qualifying and ranking points prior to the championship competition by participating in league meets. The PVHS robotics teams are a part of the Emmert League, which consists of 11 teams from the Quad-City area. These preliminary meets give teams a chance to test out their progress in preparation from the League Championship, which will take place in January. Each team’s top ten matches from all the league meets they participate in will factor into their initial ranking at the League Championship. At these league meets, teams can also participate in mock interview sessions—with almost immediate feedback—to present to judges their robot design, code, outreach events, etc.
In a match, there are two alliances competing against each other: red and blue. Each alliance consists of two teams, and alliances are randomly pre-selected before the meets. These alliances change every round, so teams have the opportunity to work with a variety of teams. With this system, one team’s ally for one round can be their opponent in the next. By the time of the League Championship, teams will be aware of their competition from the league meets. At this level of competition, they will then have the chance to “scout” with each other and choose their own alliances.
Team “Deviation from the Norm” and Team “Everything That’s Radical” competed at their second league meet this season on Dec. 3 in DeWitt, Iowa. The latter part of the meet was postponed due to technical difficulties with the beacon pressers on the field. Highlights from this meet included an all-PV alliance defeating the Combustible Lemons from Davenport West in one of the rounds. In another round, Team “Deviation from the Norm” paired with UBett Robotics, scoring 100 points, the highest league-wide for a single match this year so far.
Team “Deviation from the Norm” and their respective alliances won 3/7 of their matches on Saturday, and Team “Everything That’s Radical” won 2/6 of their matches with their corresponding alliances. Students are using these league meets to test out new ideas on their robots and figure out what works best to implement when it comes time for the League Championship.
Team leader McClain Acri, senior, commented on season goals and progress. “We plan to make it to Super Regionals again this year, but in order to reach that goal, we will need to make improvements to the robot and our team’s connectivity. Our team didn’t do great at the last league meet; however, we needed it to become aware of what improvements we need to make prior to the League Championship,” she acknowledged.
At a much younger level, PV students are being exposed to developmental experiences that will help build a strong foundation of engineering-related skills. In honor of Computer Science Education Week, 3rd grade students at each elementary will be offered a chance to take part in an “Hour of Code” after the early out on Wed., Dec. 7. This event, planned by the host PVHS Iowa Girls Code team, is designed to introduce the basics of computer programming, with no coding background required. FIRST Lego League Team “Flourish & Bots” will also be facilitating.
“I was really excited to see so many girls register for our event. We typically see lower numbers of girls participating in our robotics programs so this is encouraging,” stated Theresa Barber, RVDH Robotics Coordinator. “I’m also excited that the event is being organized and hosted by girls who are passionate about computer science and STEM. They are great role models for what an engineer looks like.” Barber explained that an introductory STEM event like this can show kids possibilities for future careers.
