Droids, LEGOs and Robots, Oh My!

Accomplishments

On Saturday, December 16, Newton’s dual-high-school robotics team, the LigerBots  hosted the Massachusetts East State Championship FIRST LEGO League (FLL) tournament at Newton North High School along with a STEAM Expo featuring exhibitors such as:

  • Society of Women engineers, who showed kids how to build an LED light;
  • The 501st Legion, who all came in their Star Wars costumes and showed off their droids; and
  • Johnson String Instruments, who demonstrated the math behind music.
STEAM Expo activities
A total of 48 FIRST Lego League (FLL) Competition teams had qualified to compete in this State Championship. After a full day of head-to-head competition, presentations, and STEAM activities, the Goofy Gyros FLL team from Ashland won 1st place, and Newton’s own New England Code Crackers came in 2nd. Newton’s Tie-Dye Chickens won 3rd place in Core Values. Other Newton teams participating in the State Championship included the Cookie Coders and The First Layer. Ligerbots adult mentor Diane Levy was recognized with FLL’s prestigious volunteer award for everything she did to organize the whole event.
Ashland’s Goofy Gyros won 1st place, and Newton’s New England Code Crackers won 2nd.
Honored guests included U.S. Congressman, Jake Auchincloss, who came with his whole family. and the Chief Operating officer of FIRST, Chris Rake.
Many adult volunteers served as facilitators, coaches, and judges for the competition. City Councilor Julia Malakie and Councilor-Elect Rena Getz volunteered as judges, and Councilors Tarik Lucas and John Oliver, along with Councilor-Elect Martha Bixby, also came to check out all the work that LigerBots do to promote and facilitate STEAM education.
Volunteer judges for FLL State Championship
Three Girl Scout Brownie Troops came, earned STEAM patches, and worked on their STEAM TryIts at our Expo. There was much more community participation as visiting FIRST Robotics teams like Record Robotics and the Lobstah Bot helped out and some LigerBots Alumni came back to help out.
Greer Tan Swiston is a volunteer mentor for the LigerBots.

Superintendent to recommend additional funding for STEM

Opportunities, Resources

Last week, Mayor Ruthanne Fuller announced an updated financial strategy to apply 70% of the City’s one-time overlay surplus funds (plus associated interest) as a supplement to the budget for the Newton Public Schools. Today, Newton’s Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Anna Nolin, announced that she will be recommending to the School Committee that, among several “most critical needs of the district” the Superintendent listed, this additional funding should be used in part to:

  • Reduce high school class sizes in math and science

  • Restore some high school electives, most critically in science and engineering (based on course request data from both high schools)

  • Create additional planning time and dedicated math and literacy intervention blocks in the elementary schools where they are needed most

  • Invest in math and STEM curricula which have not been reviewed or upgraded in well over a decade

The School Committee will here the Superintendent’s recommendations at its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, December 18.

LigerBots to host MA East State FLL Championship, with STEAM expo and robot zoo, Dec. 16

Events

The LigerBots, Newton’s competitive high school robotics team, will host the Massachusetts East State Championship FIRST LEGO League (FLL) tournament at Newton North High School on December 16, along with a STEAM activity expo for children and a robot zoo. The tournament and the expo are free and open to the public. No registration is required for visitors. The tournament runs 9AM-4PM, and the STEAM expo hours are 10AM-3PM.

The STEAM expo provides FLL students, their parents, coaches, and the community with educational, hands-on activities while the competition is going on. LigerBots expect to offer many STEAM activities and demonstrations for kids aged 5 – 14, plus displays of robots made by high school students, and activities provided by local companies and organizations. Please take a look at this Flickr album of a previous event to see what happens at tournament and STEAM expo. For more information, email info@ligerbots.org.

Volunteer as a judge in ‘Future City’ middle-school civil engineering competition, Jan. 20

Opportunities

Future City is a four-month civil-engineering program for middle-school students, culminating in an annual design competition in January. This year, it will be January 20, and the theme is Sustainable and Safe Power. The program seeks professional engineers (and others with relevant technical backgrounds) to volunteer as judges to evaluate the student teams’ work. Volunteers can be working professionals, retirees, or college/graduate students with experience in STEM, urban planning, architecture, or related fields. Learn more at EngineerYourFuture.org or email Reed Brockman at newengland@futurecity.org.

LigerBots Host Newton FLL Qualifier

Events

On November 18, Newton’s high-school robotics team, the LigerBots, hosted a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Newton Qualifier tournament — in which teams of elementary and middle schoolers passionate about robotics compete using LEGO robots that they have designed and built. The LigerBots have hosted FLL tournaments since 2008. This event had LEGOs and robots in every corner of the building, booming voices of the MC announcing matches, 14 FLL teams competing, and 70 LigerBot student volunteers working hard to run this show. FLL teams displayed their projects, on this year’s FIRST theme — The Arts — in the Newton North cafeteria.

FLL teams preparing their robots for competition — L: New England Code Crackers, R: Cookie Coders

The LigerBots set up a booth on Newton North’s Main Street corridor to showcase their 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition robot and two hands-on STEAM activities: making custom buttons and origami pieces. The FLL team members enjoyed interacting with the robot — a machine that can shoot giant tennis balls for them to catch — and found the  STEAM demonstrations entertaining.

Of the 14 FLL teams that attended, four are from Newton:  New England Code Crackers, Cookie Coders, The First Layer, and Voltage.

Newton FLL teams in the qualifying tournament, clockwise from top-left: New England Code Crackers, Cookie, Coders, The First Layer, and Voltage.

The tournament concluded with an awards ceremony and a dance party. All four teams from Newton received awards: Cookie Coders (Innovation Project first place), Voltage (Innovation Project second place), New England Code Crackers (Core Values first place) and The First Layer (Judges Award).

Among the six teams that qualified to continue to the state finals next month are two teams from Newton — Cookie Coders and New England Code Crackers — and four other teams: Goofy Gyros, Mechanical Madness, Acton Avengers, and The Mind Coders. These teams will compete at the upcoming Massachusetts FLL Championship, which will be divided between competitions at WPI and at Newton North High School.

The MA FLL Championship tournament at Newton North High School, also run by the LigerBots, will be on December 16, 9AM-4PM — free and open the public. As many as 48 FLL teams will compete head-to-head, and the LigerBots will once again host a STEAM Expo, run alongside the competition. At the STEAM Expo, 10AM-3PM, FLL team members and all attendees will have the opportunity to engage in a large variety of hands-on STEAM activities, explore a number of local organizations’ booths, and interact with bigger robots from FIRST Robotics Competition and FIRST Tech Challenge.

LigerBots to Host FLL Regional Qualifying Tournament at NNHS, Nov. 18

Events

The LigerBots will again host the Newton Qualifier, a FIRST LEGO League robotics competition for Massachusetts students in Grades 4-8 on Saturday, November 18, 8AM-4PM, at Newton North HS. It’s free and open to the public. The theme of this year’s competition is Masterpiece. Teams will compete using LEGO robots they have designed, built, and programmed to perform complex tasks. The public may also view the teams’ displays of their solutions to real-world problems related to the urban-design theme. There will also be hands-on STEM activities for kids, and the LigerBots’ First Robotics Competition robot will be on display.

The next FLL competition hosted by the LigerBots will be Massachusetts FLL Championship Tournament on December 16 at Newton North HS.

Grades 8-12: Register Now for Northeastern Splash!, In-Person, Nov. 11

Events

Each fall and spring, NEPTUN (a Northeastern University student group) hosts Splash!, a free program for students in Grades 8-12 to take fun and informative mini-classes led by Northeastern undergraduate students. This year, Splash! will again be held in-person at Ryder Hall (11 Leon St, Boston) on the Northeastern campus, on November 11, 8:30AM-6:40PM. The $0 cost includes free pizza and a T-shirt. Registration is now open and is first-come/first-served and requires setting up a free student account. For more information, see the FAQs or contact nu.neptun@gmail.com. Among the 26 in-person Splash! courses this year are these STEM offerings:

  • Electronics and Soldering Workshop
  • The eggscellent challenge
  • Will robots destroy the world?
  • The Entire Internet in an Hour!
  • Emoji: How They Work and Why They Break Everything
  • How to Preserve Dead Things
  • Real Life Sci-Fi: Gene Editing
  • Black Holes
  • From Atoms to Adam: Science’s Best Understanding of the History of Everything
  • Miraculous 3-Pound Jell-O
  • Homemade Gel Electrophoresis/Edible DNA!