Jackson Area Career Center FIRST Robotics Team Looking for New Members
posted on November 23rd, 2009
Career Center FIRST Robotics Team Looking for New Members
JACKSON, Mich. – The Jackson Area Career Center’s FIRST Robotics team – the Jacktown Vectors –will hold an information meeting for interested students, parents, and mentors on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 6:00 p.m. at Jackson Area Career Center.
The Vectors are looking for high school students interested in designing and building a robot to compete in FIRST Robotics competitions this winter. The robot will be built starting in January until mid-February after school at the Career Center, from 3:00 to approximately 6:00 pm., Mondays-Fridays (and possibly some Saturdays).
“We need students who like in working together as a team to build, problem-solve, and promote a robotics project that is built for competition,” said Ed Redies, a Career Center instructor and FIRST Robotics team coordinator.
Students interested in engineering will enjoy this team activity, but also needed are students interested in business and communications to build a team website, produce team t-shirts and banners, as well as organizing fund raising activities.
Adult mentors interested in coaching students are also invited. Area companies can help support the program by encouraging mentorship by their electrical and/or mechanical engineers, software/web developers, and other technical staff, as well as individuals with business and/or project organization backgrounds.
The student team will use their ingenuity to build a robot that responds to specific commands and carries out tasks based on this year’s FIRST Robotic guidelines. A box of standard parts and rules will be delivered January 2 to commence the competition. Once the robot is built, the team competes against other Michigan schools at scheduled statewide competitions to see which robots can do the assigned tasks the fastest.
More details on timelines and meeting dates will be covered at the informational meeting.
More specific information about FIRST Robotics can be found at the link below: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/resourcecenter.aspx?id=952.
CONTACTS:
Ed Redies
Project Lead The Way Engineering Instructor
Jackson Area Career Center
(517) 768-5176
ed.redies@jcisd.org
William Farrant
Computer Systems Technology Instructor
Jackson Area Career Center
(517) 990-6616
william.farrant@jcisd.org
Cindy Lyons
Communications Specialist
Jackson Area Career Center
(517) 768-5211
cindy.lyons@jcisd.org
