Get a FREE Copy of the 20th Anniversay Yearbook for 2 Train Robotics, Illustrious Student Robotics Team - Bronx, NYC

From my In Box - from Gary Israel, mentor and guardian angel of 2 Train Robotics team...
Subject: A 1999-2019 Photo Retrospective of 2Train Robotics

Mark

PS- Importantly, Gary has given me permission to make this rich publication available to all who'd like to learn about his team and the extraordinary experiences all students may have with a student robotics team of their own: Click here to download a copy of
"Inside the Journey of 2Train Robotics: Through the Years" 
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Dear Friends of 2Train, Below are some of the team's highlights over the last two decades.

Message from Ponytail Posse, an all-girls Robotics Team - FIRST® LEGO® League

From my In Box...
From: FIRST Tech Challenge
To: markgura
Subject: Mark, here’s Rose’s FIRST story

"We don’t build robots – the robots build us.” - FIRST founder Dean Kamen

FIRST^® programs impact hundreds of thousands of students each year by engaging them in hands-on, project-based STEM challenges. We’re excited to share Rose’s experience with you!

The following is an excerpt from the team blog for the Ponytail Posse, an all-girls FIRST^® LEGO^® League team that progressed to FIRST^® Tech Challenge from St. Paul, Minnesota. Rose explains the massive head start she and her teammates received from their years in FIRST, beginning as a FIRST LEGO League team. 

"People are usually able to understand the depth of how participating in robotics affects lives. They understand that it helps us gain experiences which help us become better engineers, problem solvers, and collaborators. But while they understand the depth, these people often fail to recognize the breadth of how being part of a robotics team can shape a young person. It’s not just a path toward a successful STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) career, but a gateway to self-expression, confidence, critical thinking, and empathy.

But as we got older, we began to realize how our robotics experiences were influencing how we thought about the future. We could see ourselves going to college and starting a career in engineering, entrepreneurship, and other fields we had never considered before. These were tangible destinations that we had already been pursuing for years without realizing it — in other words, we were giving ourselves a massive head start...."


Read the full post at: The team's blog

Click on book cover for information

Getting Started with LEGO Robotics. Anyone who works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too) This books explains it all!

New York Yankees Honor the Morris High School FIRST Robotics team

In my in box this morning...

Dear Friends of 2Train Robotics,

The NY Yankees will honor the Morris High School FIRST Robotics team on Friday May 3rd at 6:45pm on the field during a pregame ceremony prior to the 7:05pm ball game against the Minnesota Twins. This will be the 18th year in a row that the team has been honored on the field at Yankee Stadium. Of course, this year is very special as we and Yankees celebrate the team's 20th Anniversary.

For 2Train, this game will be our first Old-Timers Day with students returning to attend the 20th Anniversary Luncheon the following day. Members representing every year (1999-2019) will attend the celebration.

This will be our 11th consecutive year on the field at the new Stadium (2009-2019)

In the old Yankee Stadium, the team was honored for seven consecutive years (2002-2008)

During this year's pregame ceremony the stadium's public address announcer will share with the crowd that 2Train Robotics won the Central NY FIRST Robotics Regional Competition in Utica NY last month. During that competition, Demetrius Weathers, a junior, was chosen as a Dean's List Finalist.

In April at the New York City FIRST Robotics Competition, 2Train reached the Quarterfinals in the team's 19^th consecutive year participating in the New York City competition. The robotics team also received the Autonomous Award: Sponsored by Ford.

On a personal note I am proud to join 2Train mentors Bob Stark (2011), Reuben Bridges (2015), and Paul Lucien (2017) as the NYC 2019 Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. The award is presented to one adult Mentor at each regional competition, "who best leads, inspires, teaches and empowers their team using excellent communication skills."

Warm regards,

Gary

2Train Robotics | 166th Street and Boston Road, Bronx, NY 10456

LEGO Education's SPIKE Prime Kits for Classroom Robotics/Classroom STEM Activities

New STEM Kits from LEGO Education... WOW!

Great article on SPIKE Prime in WIRED Magazine...
https://www.wired.com/story/lego-spike-prime/
Lego's Newest Set Lets Kids Build Robots—and Confidence

"Memories of middle school likely conjure up all sorts of thoughts and emotions. “Productive STEM learning” is probably low on the list. But on Tuesday, Lego is introducing a new coding and robotics set called Spike Prime that it hopes will break through with a notoriously distracted audience.

Lego has already dabbled in this world with its Lego Mindstorms line. But those kits can potentially intimidate at the 11- to 14-year-old level, both in complexity and design. Mindstorms tend toward a black and red color palette, with builds that lean heavily on cyberpunk sci-fi imagery. Think “robots with mohawks.” By contrast, the Spike Prime set aims for accessibility, opting for bright colors, friendly shapes, and drag-and-drop coding tools that gently nudge students towards learning.

“We worked so hard on making it appealing to everybody, because we know that everybody will need this kind of skill in the future,” says Marianne Nytoft Bach, director of Lego’s secondary school team.

 


Lego envisions students in the classroom working in pairs on creations that range from a break dancing robot to a weather forecaster to a grasshopper-like racing module; there are 33 lesson plans in all, each structured to last 45 minutes. (Because this is Lego, you’re naturally also welcome to go off-book.) The $330 kit contains a whopping 523 pieces—an expansion kit ups the total to 603—that are roughly color-coded to help guide the middle school audience through the process of sorting out which does what. A yellow centralized hub drives the action; all the wheels are blue, the sensors black, and so on. You can preorder today; it ships in August.

Lego’s not the only company trying to entice young minds into engineering; if anything, Spike Prime is late to a party that LittleBits and others kicked off years ago. Osmo, Kano, and Sphero have all made huge strides in that space, with a variety of playful builds that give engineering lessons a tangible boost. In that sense, the significance of Spike Prime is adding yet another option to a category of product that has transformed the classroom already.

“There’s a lot of learning theory that says that experiential learning is powerful; it’s going to give kids that concrete experience to connect the more abstract, theoretical concepts to,” says Monica Cardella, director of the INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering at Purdue University. “Any time you’re able to combine the hands-on experience with a discussion that’s a little bit more abstract is going to benefit anybody who’s learning.”

But Lego also offers a well-rounded version of that vision. Its sets are broadly adaptable. It provides lesson plans that cover not just the creation of models but also how to incorporate them into math and language arts studies. Muthyala points to a lesson called “What Is This,” in which students construct a motor that moves a ring around. The goal isn’t just to build something simple and abstract; it’s for the students to use their imaginations to describe what they’ve made.

Other, less obvious benefits come into play as well. The worry with a lesson-driven kit like this isn’t that kids won’t be able to complete the task; it’s that they’ll be able to do so without challenging themselves. Making attempts that don’t work—and figuring out why they didn’t—is a crucial part of the learning process.

“With all the things that kids are learning through testing and troubleshooting, they’re developing a sense of confidence that it’s OK if it doesn’t work the first time,” says Cardella, “and a sense of grit, going through multiple cycles and iterations.”

Read the full article at its source: https://www.wired.com/story/lego-spike-prime/

MOREbot: A 3D-printed robot ecosystem that grows with its young users

Just ran across this one... LOVE the concept!

MOREbot: A 3D-printed robot ecosystem that grows with you...
MOREbot is a platform for the next generation of innovators to bring their ideas to life

Read the full informational piece at its source:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/morebot/morebot-a-3d-printed-robot-ecosystem-that-grows-wi