2022-2023 Season
This year, our team wanted to reach out to as many young students as possible with STEM opportunities. During the preseason of the First Tech Challenge, our team members taught two three-week-long classes that allowed participants to gain hands-on experience with our CAD software, Onshape. In the class, we taught the fundamentals of the software, including but not limited to: sketching, extruding, assemblies. To teach these skills, we created our own curriculum, leading participants through a boat creating project. The participants were able to customize their boats in their own unique way, and at the end of the event, were given 3D prints of their custom designs.
National Advocacy Conference 2022
Over the summer, our team members attended the National Advocacy Conference. We met with the senators that represent Maryland in Congress: Senator Ben Cardin and Senator Van Hollen. Additionally, we also met with Representative John Sarbanes. We discussed the benefits of funding STEM programs, and convinced them to continue support in funding title IV, part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act. The additional funding in the Every Student Succeeds Act will allow the government to allocate more funding into STEM programs, including FIRST.
Miller and Central Branch Outreaches
In partnership with the Howard County Library System, Cryptic debuted the "Taking Your First Steps in STEM" event at the Miller and Central Branch Library to reach new audiences in different parts of the county. Some of the activities we coordinated:
- Create Race Cars: Participants are given different Lego pieces to create cars that will race to travel down a ramp as far as possible that will simulate the trial and error process when building.
- Learn to Code: Participants will get an accurate feeling of how programmers try to solve difficult problems in different ways using block code.
- Build a Rube Goldberg Machine: Students created a Rube Goldberg Machine that transports a ping pong ball from the start point to the end point, teaching the design process taught by the design team.
HoCo Hazards #22742
Many participants from our outreaches wanted to participate in FTC, but members of our team found it hard for them to get involved. As a result, members of team Cryptic created FTC team HoCo Hazards #22742 in partnership with the Howard County Library System to give our community the opportunity to prepare for and compete in FTC. Through communication with the library system President and teen curriculum direction, we were able to form a completely free public FTC team for our county. The Library System provided funds, and our members dedicated their extra time to mentoring and leading the team. The club quickly drew the interest of many people, and had over 40 people apply to join the team. Due to team sizing issues, we could only accept 15 people to the team.
