Ink and Metal 5773 is a robotics team from American High School in Fremont, CA that represents the school in the FIRST Tech Challenge - a rigorous and fast-paced robotics competition where students design, build, program a robot and compete against...
My name is Vishwa Vijayasankar, a freshman majoring in Computer Science at UCSC. As a sophomore at American High School, I entered as a new recruit to the school affiliated FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team, Ink and Metal. Although most faces were new, two of my friends from freshman year, Rahul and Ayush, guided me to understand my role on the team and get involved with other members. I entered as an outreach member, specializing in coordinating events aimed towards inspiring non-STEM communities to gain exposure to STEM. However, the team that year struggled with balancing initiatives centering towards this goal and completing the robot due to the team structure which limited an outreach member's participation in the robot and vice versa.
Under the captainship of Karan Gandhi, a senior at American High School who had earned the nickname as the "Soul of Outreach" on our team, we started outreach events that year. A memorable event was one hosted in the Oakland Aviation Museum as it was the first in-person event I had gone to. Prior to this event, I recollect having to send multiple emails for sponsorships and grants to companies, which I did not enjoy when required to do it in a single sitting. At the museum, we hosted a basic outreach event (a name that would be coined in my following year on the team) where we showcased our robot, explained how it works, and distributed flyers. Following this format with around twenty people, we realized improvements to enhance the experience for the attendees. Moving forward, we believed having younger audiences drive the robot would further appeal to their interest beyond them only being able to watch us control the robot. Moreover, introducing the audiences to the procedures, even briefly, when they are in-person would persuade them to take initiative towards forming their own robotics team or joining an existing one.
Our aerospace engineering workshop near the end of that season offered a more hands-on experience for the elementary schoolers who attended, requiring them to build an airplane using styrofoam, hot glue, rubber bands, and popsicle sticks. We had a minimal audience of only three elementary students but what I believe set this event apart from other events was the involvement we maintained with our audience. Rather than merely providing them with instructions and allowing them to complete the task, we guided them step by step through the design process so they would be able to understand its implication in simple projects such as this one. At the end of the season, our team realized that we had limited the scope of our outreach as we were unable to appeal to a wider audience and host specific events catered for the purpose of outreach. However, we were able to save time during the course of our season as most of our events involved the robot. While this meant reduced additional costs for outreach, it depleted us of options for unique and compelling events. As days passed and events hosted, we understood the need to diversify our audience by having different focuses on each event.
11th grade is arguably the most difficult year of high school with multiple college-level class offerings and stacked assignments but it was one of the most memorable years in my life. The 2020-2021 season was structured to be entirely virtual just as many schools had shifted to due to the pandemic.
Beyond these changes and increased academic pressure, I was excited to transform our team's outreach into a Worlds worthy effort as the Outreach Captain. The initial meetings passed with a breakdown of the award criteria and a reflection of the previous season. I was quick to include a criteria detailing different categories that assess the quality of an outreach idea, including impact, audience, feasibility, and uniqueness. Out of all these factors, I gave utmost importance to impact because outreach revolves around changing the community in a positive light with the help of STEM. In that aspect, our events are designed to inspire audiences of multiple age groups to turn passionate about STEM and involve themselves outside of attending our events. Although events can be as simple as teaching such as the Engineering & Coding classes we hosted during the offseason, our impact resonates through the board game designed by the students to combat COVID-19, and their projects submitted for the 5773 Design Challenge.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Sneak Peek at our Engineering Curriculum
Apart from teaching initiatives, I aimed to engage students by offering more hands-on experiences for students. They will only participate in STEM once they understand what is STEM and how it feels to engage with it. Emphasizing these two aspects would appeal to any audience and interest them by spurring their passion. In addition to showing them examples of STEM in the real world, it is as important to allow them to experiment with STEM to discover their hidden talents. The international robotics clubs we formed in different parts of India enabled students to design and program a virtual robot with WeBot Simulations using the topics we learned in every class. The easy accessibility of this software allowed for students to work on it offline while we were able to effectively mentor them even from a different country.
