by Dave Warner
This year, the Little Falls Library hosted two FLL Robotics teams that competed in the Potsdam/Utica remote regional championship. Rockin’ Robotics placed 1st in the innovation project and 4th in their robot missions. News Channel 2 placed 7th in robot missions.
“As it turned out, we ended up getting enough kids for two teams, so we brought in my wife Julie and Shelley Villata. We had an open house in August, and the kids have been here every Monday since,” he stated.
Renzulli challenged Regan to raise $1,000, and in the end, the instructors and the kids raised over $11,000.
“We had a lot of community involvement and support. One of the takeaways is one or more of our sponsors handed out tickets for people who really needed a meal. We went through organizations like churches to find out who was most in need. I saw a gentleman in the street and asked him if he’d like a meal, and wasn’t so much the meal, but the fact that we asked,” Regan said.
When it came to sponsors, “They came from 9 different states, 3 different countries, 3 different continents, and they’re all focusing on Little Falls. What is going on here, why do you have a robotics program? We don’t have one in New Zealand or Saudi Arabia, so we’re under the microscope worldwide.”
Regan said the program is important because it brings the kids together to learn leadership, some technology, and it inspires them to keep going and that they can make a difference outside the normal academic world. “It just blossomed beyond belief.”
The instructor for the course, Alexandria Burger, said she got started when she was about their age herself. “I went to a SUNY Robotics summer camp for girls. I did a mini-competition with these robots and then I got into FFL, which is the challenge they are doing. I then went on to FTC, which is the First Tech Challenge, where you build everything out of metal and fabricated parts instead of Legos.”
“I did that for four years and then got scholarships. I then became a referee and a judge, and saw an opportunity to become a coach,” she said.
She said being involved in these types of courses gave her leadership skills, which allowed her to be pretty successful in college.
Burger is a senior at SUNY Poly mechanical engineering.
Mama bear Julie Regan said, “I ran this kind of program twenty years ago in Saudi Arabia. I met with Library Board here and explained what the program was about. I explained that there were three different components involved with it and from there, we decided that we would look for somebody to help run the program.”
“We started out with twenty-one kids originally, so for the twelve kids that are still in it – that’s true grit and perseverance on their part,” she stated.
She said that everybody loves playing with the robots, but nobody loves the research, which is one-third of the program. They had to learn teamwork, and how to think outside the box. “When it comes down to sitting down and really trying to figure out what is a problem related to the topic, which was cargo this year, and what kind of innovative solution can you apply to that project – that’s really hard for kids,” stated Regan.
All of the kids had to come up with a problem that existed in cargo, and their first field trip was to the post office. “They learned how packages move and what problems they had, and took a tour of the backroom and all the trucks coming in and out.”
Mr. Edwards, the dad of one of the kids, works at the Target Distribution Center and he came in and talked to the children about their issues. “They use gigantic cranes and equipment to move things around, and he showed us a video of it,” said Regan.
In the end, one team decided to use drones to deliver packages. The other came upon a video that showed how the shipping containers were all backed up at ports.
“The kids decided to use the containers for Homes for the Homeless. They realized in talking to contractors and tiny homes companies that having a central location with a kitchen, a shower, and bath facilities made the individual units less expensive. That team actually won the innovation award for first prize in the project.”
Regan said, “I think these kinds of programs get kids thinking. It gets them working together and it gets them thinking outside the box. We have information coming at us all day, every day from every source. It’s really easy to regurgitate information. It’s really hard to think about how to present that information in a new way to change the world. That’s really what they had to do.”
