Outreach – TeraBridges 18603

OUTREACH This Season

At TERABRIDGES, we build innovative robots and BRIDGE the connection between technology and leadership, empowering the next generations of STEM professionals

Reached:

9,500

people within and outside our community

Our team is part of the robotics club at Upper St Clair School district. The club includes 400+ students throughout the district.

This season, we have had a significant focus on developing assistive technologies. With the help of Industry professionals we are hoping to help young children with special conditions.

Met with:

17

Industry Professionals

The multiple visits gave us opportunities to learn about Robotics in the real world. Industry professionals also mentored and helped us with improving our robot.

Our opportunities also allowed us to meet mentors who would support us along our mission of assistive technology.

Fundraised:

$35,500

for our team

We created a sponsorship packet to send to potential sponsors over email or other networking platforms. We typically send these to STEM related companies that we would like to connect with.

We have secured 25+ business donors and 100+ smaller donors so far, and this number is still growing.

FIRST PIPELINE

We offer FLL Explore, FLL Challenge, and FTC programs to 400+ students in the community

ELEMENTARY AFTERSCHOOL OUTREACH | November & December 2024

This after-school program introduced robotics to elementary students. Our team created the syllabus, organized the materials including 12 mazes, and provided the volunteers for this program. We found that in the past years, about 10% of these students entered our FLL Challenge program.

FLL EXPLORE

Our school club assisted with 18 FLL Explore teams throughout our 3 elementary schools. These students showed an interest in robotics and received guidance from student volunteers.

FLL CHALLENGE

Our middle schools host a total of 11 FLL teams. Our team helps mentor these students to create successful FLL robots. One of our team members designed and ordered the shirts for all 11 teams. We had 3 FLL teams go to the PA State Championship!

FTC

Our high school has 5 total FTC teams, and we are one of them. Almost all of the students from FLL join one of the FTC teams. Terabridges has 7 out of 11 leadership roles in the club that help organise the FTC teams and the rest of the FIRST pipeline.

GLOBAL IMPACT

Connecting with FTC Teams across the World

ZOOM MEETING COLLABORATION AND MENTORING

TeraBridges has brought FIRST to many places outside of our home. Throughout the season, we mentored a Rhode Island FTC Team, #22756 RoboKnights. We connected with multiple FTC Teams from USA, China and Canada. We are assisting a rural elementary school in China begin a FLL program. We connected with students in China and India and plan to establish FLL teams in their schools.

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

After learning our teammates’ neighbor was paraplegic but still managed to play video games using a QuadStick, we were inspired to discover and create similar tools with the help of industry professionals.

ABLE GAMERS

A non-profit we connected with to learn about how disabled individuals can still play video games. We are working with them to discover unique assistive devices. They also introduced us to Makers Making Change.

UMPC HEALTH PLAN & MITCH BELL

Mitch Bell, a Rehab Innovation Specialist, taught us how many disabled individuals can control devices like game controllers, robots, and drones through various assistive technologies. We are working with him to create a device that allows assistive devices such as the Xbox Adaptive controller to transmit radio frequencies to drones, enabling disabled individuals to play Drone Soccer.

GO BABY GO – CHATHAM UNIVERSITY

We connected with the GoBabyGo program at Chatham, a group that builds toy ride on cars to give disabled young children mobility. We worked with them to create our own assistive car and grant mobility to a disabled child in our community.