A robotics team was established this year in the Haifa city for the FIRST competition in the FTC league.
FIRST, is a non-profit organization (the acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The organization was established in the United States with the aim of providing inspiration, developing motivation and curiosity and encouraging young people to a world of values, engineering, science and technology.
Urban God in the preparatory competition for the national competition
This is a program based on experiential and meaningful learning in the fields of science, engineering and technology. Groups of students from all over the country design and build robots that compete against other groups just like in the world of sports. The program gives students entrepreneurship and creativity while having fun based on a challenge and a joint group effort.
This week, the Ironi H's team participated in a preparatory competition for the national competition that will be held in mid-February 2020. The team is called "Noa's Group" named after the late Noa Hait, who studied at Ironi H's in the years 2010-2015 and was run over in a car accident in 2018, while riding a bicycle. In Haifa, Noa was an outstanding athlete and coach in a triathlon team.
Young technology instructors in schools in Haifa
20 members of the group are students from grades XNUMX to XNUMX. The professional mentors (mentors) of the group are Ariel Boukiris, a graduate of the school (and a graduate of the FRC competition) and Reny Rettig, a parent with experience as a mentor in the FRC competition. The founder of the group is Yossi Barkai , a teacher of physics and computer science in the cities of H. The group was established with a vision to establish a community of young technology instructors that will operate in the school and other schools in Haifa, in training and technological activation and mentoring of young groups in FIRST competitions.
The FIRST global organization cultivates the idea of 'kind professionalism'. Accordingly, the organization encourages all the participating adult groups to help each other a lot and to carry out significant technological activities in the community.
The FIRST Israel organization organizes 4 types of technological competitions in Israel every year, at different levels of complexity:
• FLL Junior – for students from Kindergarten to 4th grade with WeDo engineering and programming kits, by Lego.
• FLL – for 3th to XNUMXth grade students with EVXNUMX robotics kits in Lego's MindStorm programming environment.
• FTC – for 7th to 12th grade students.
• FRC – for 9th to 12th grade students.
Live here - Haifa News: A smart robot competition Noa will move... in memory of Noa Hait 1997-2018
The FTC league has been officially active in Israel since 2016. Only about 40 teams compete in it. The annual theme of the FTC competition in 2019-2020 is building a brick tower on a construction site.
During the competition day, each team competed in 5 'sets', lasting 3 minutes. In each campaign, 2 'alliances' face each other. Each alliance consists of two groups. It happens that teams that were part of the alliance in one round will face each other in another round. The winning alliance is the one that earns a higher score. The score is given for meeting many tasks. Various deviations earn the opposing alliance a lot of points. The first 30 seconds in each set are performed automatically by the robots. After that, student drivers take over the robot: one drives the robot and the other operates cube collection and building mechanisms. The third in the team is the coach, the manager of the driver team.
Since the establishment of the group in the cities of God in September 2019, the students have met in the professional teams:
3D planning, building a shield, assembling mechanisms, programming (in the Kotlin language) and drivers. In preparation for the competitions, the pace of work and training sessions increased (almost daily). From time to time the group trains together with other groups from the Carmel region: the mentoring group from the Megiddo Regional Council ("Megiddo Lions"), the Reali group from Toss ("Supernova") and a group from the Meir Shafia youth village.
About 40% of the members of the group are students, and two of them are graduates of the FLL competition at Nofim Elementary School. These students, and others, really want to initiate elementary school and kindergarten students in the junior league competitions. The motivation for this comes, among other things, from the recognition that exposure to technological thinking and creation at a young age encourages participation in technological activity at older ages and building a living and growing community.
There are three district preparatory competitions.
Ironi participated yesterday 2/1/2020 in the northern competition. On February 19,20, 2020, XNUMX, the national competition will take place. The national winners will participate in the world competition in Houston, Texas.
The 'Noa' group seeks to find a partner, who will assist financially and enable the purchase of equipment, both for the national competition and for the diverse, planned community activities.
The building of the Municipal High School is dangerous in an earthquake
The buildings are very old and were not built to earthquake standards
This is not the only school
We must rebuild the schools in Haifa, not wait for disasters
And not to be satisfied with strengthening ceilings
In addition, the small shelters in the schools are not suitable for the increased number of students
The schools cannot be used as emergency centers because they themselves are dangerous
All the old schools in Haifa must be rebuilt. At least one new one every year.
and build them protected so that they can receive the evacuation of residents in the event of fires, war, earthquakes and more.
This is task number 1 in Haifa and no one talks about it. More important than decorations like an Olympic pool.