Photos from various outreach activities

For the past few years, team members visit local elementry schools to introduce students to STEM and FIRST. From these visits, several new FIRST Lego League teams have been started in the schools. Several school groups have come out to our shop to see the FRC robots. We have also started having demonstrations at the Mississippi Childrens Museum in Jackson. This is a great way to interact with kids of all ages and introduce FIRST to the Jackson community.

In addition to demonstrating robots, team members assist in running the Gains in Education of Mathematics and Science (GEMS) summer camps. During GEMS I, teenagers are immersed in the scientific areas of biology, chemistry, engineering, programming, and robotics. These students then get the opportunity to attend GEMS II the following summer and focus on two of the areas. Former and current team members teach the robotics portion of both camps. In GEMS I, students program BOE-Bots to run a game scenario similar to an FLL competition. The GEMS II students simulate a mini-FIRST season using game animation from previous years. They go through all the design steps our team goes through then they drive the actual competition robots from previous years. Over 50% of our team participated in the GEMS program and now volunteer during summer.