New Student Club Promotes STEM Learning Among Children
On Sunday, January 13, Aviva Shooman 鈥20S, who is currently majoring in the physical sciences and minoring in computer science, represented 黑料社 All鈥檚 new Engineering Club by serving as the head referee at the FIRST庐 (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League庐 Robotics competition held at the Aviation Career & Technical Education High School in Long Island City, New York.
FIRST is an international nonprofit organization that contributes to spreading STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] innovation and creativity through many kinds of robotics games.
Shooman was a natural for her refereeing gig, having previously served as a robotics referee for Hebrew-, French-, and English-speaking children between the ages of 8 and 16 in the Boston, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and New York areas.
Elisheva Yocheved Siegfried 鈥21S (left) and Aviva Shooman work with two young competitors
In this year鈥檚 competition at Aviation High School, the theme was titled 鈥淚nto Orbit鈥 and involved a six-month effort by a total of 14 teams from across New York State to design, build and code for a robot that would solve different scenarios astronauts face in space. The game board challenge is made up of 15 LEGO-themed missions that the children have 2陆 minutes to complete in what is defined as a robotics 鈥渕atch.鈥 The teams use their robot to autonomously score as many points as they can before the timer runs out.
鈥淔or the students,鈥 said Shooman, 鈥渢he competition is very stressful because anything could go wrong. The board might not be the same as the one on which they practiced, and the robot could break, the battery die or the program run incorrectly.鈥
Shooman was ably assisted by Elisheva Yocheved Siegfried 鈥21S, another member of the Engineering Club, who was refereeing a competition for the first time. The two of them, along with five other referees trained by Shooman, set up the game boards and scored the matches. As the head referee, Shooman also debriefed the coaches about the intricacy of the event鈥檚 rules and resolved disputes among the teams.
As the teams played the game, the overall excitement in the room became palpable. 鈥淢y favorite part about volunteering is seeing all their hard work culminate in this moment,鈥 said Shooman. 鈥淲atching them succeed gives me a feeling of pure joy.鈥
Siegfried agreed. 鈥淎s someone who is studying math and computer science, it was a lot of fun to get to see the kids being interested and excited in what I love to do.鈥
The Engineering Club promotes student leadership in STEM by participating in outreach events for youth in Washington Heights (where they have helped local teams with their robotics coding) and inspiring collaboration through team projects by developing technical hardware and software skills.
The Engineering Club will be sending more members to serve as referees in a similar robotics competition on February 24 at the SAR Academy in Riverdale. For more information about future events, contact Aviva Shooman at shooman@mail.yu.edu or Noam Annenberg at nannenbe@mail.yu.edu.
Elisheva Yocheved Siegfried 鈥21S (left) and Aviva Shooman work with two young competitors
The Engineering Club promotes student leadership in STEM by participating in outreach events for youth in Washington Heights (where they have helped local teams with their robotics coding) and inspiring collaboration through team projects by developing technical hardware and software skills.
The Engineering Club will be sending more members to serve as referees in a similar robotics competition on February 24 at the SAR Academy in Riverdale. For more information about future events, contact Aviva Shooman at shooman@mail.yu.edu or Noam Annenberg at nannenbe@mail.yu.edu.
