-Our next discussion focuses on a growing
area of study in valley schools.
We're talking about robotics.
Two CCSD high schools recently earned a spot
in the world championships.
The Las Vegas Academy of the Arts team,
known as the LVA Robot Pigeons,
and Cimarron-Memorial High School
Team 987, the High Rollers.
"Yes, we came back from the world championships."
Inside Cimarron-Memorial High School,
Team 987, known as the High Rollers,
is back in Las Vegas after a trip to Houston
to compete in the world championships.
(Kristie Ritz) It was awesome, and it's really cool to see
because you always think of people
from around the world being different than you
and cultures being different,
but when you come together on a scale
that you're equal at, that you can all have
something in common, it's cool because
you see everyone working together
to get the robots on the field
and see how everyone competes.
This year the High Rollers
placed second in their division,
making them one of the top 50 teams
in the world.
Students create virtually every piece
of the robot used to compete,
and planning starts weeks before competitions begin.
(Jordan Wiseman) Every year we have only six weeks
to build a robot, and we build three robots.
We build a prototype bot, a practice bot
and a competition bot,
and it's a bunch of hours spent.
We're here working through school days
and after school until really late at night.
(Neal Barid) What we do is on the first day when we learn
what the game is, we get together
in separate rooms and brainstorm
for several hours about what we think would work
and different ideas we've seen in the past.
After that we all meet together in here,
and then we combine all our ideas
and then go to work prototyping.
We just take whatever ideas we had
and try to make them work in real life,
and we just keep testing.
Whichever ones work the best,
we'll put them all together,
and we'll do our best to make the best robot we can.
Established in 2002, the team here is one
of the oldest in the District,
and robotics is part of the school curriculum as well.
These students share their skills
and love of robotics with other schools
and younger students.
(Kristopher Key) We actually work closely with Becker and Molasky.
We send students there every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday to help boost our robotics platform.
(Joseph Kulinsky) Some schools don't have the resources we have,
so we give resources to those schools
so they have a better fighting chance
at competitions to do even better.
Many High Rollers are interested
in a STEM-related career, but they'll tell you
that's not the only reason
they're a member of the team.
Being part of this team
is so much more than just robots.
You get a family, you get a profession,
you really learn like who you are,
and you're able to talk to not only kids your age
but kids younger than you.
It's an awesome opportunity that we've been able
to help so many people and to reach out.
-Joining Trustees Young and Brooks now
is Joe Barry, one of the coaches
of Team 987, the High Rollers.
Coach Barry, welcome.
First of all, congratulations.
Let's talk about how Cimarron-Memorial did
at the world championships.
(Joe Barry) Thank you. This time around
in our division of 67, and there's six divisions
at this world championship,
we finished in second place.
We're used to finishing higher,
but we're pleased with the outcome this time.
-I think second place is still pretty good
at the world championship,
but I know you've got a great legacy there.
Tell me how LVA's team, the Robot Pigeons, did.
-LVA was in a different division.
As I recall, they finished 46th out of 67.
The number doesn't sound great,
but the reality is they're a rookie team.
-This is their first year.
-First-year team, and to place that well
is actually quite an accomplishment,
so we're excited about the potential
that they demonstrate for the years to come.
-That's great.
The world competition is part of something,
a national organization that's called FIRST.
Tell me how they work with CCSD schools.
There are about 100 CCSD schools,
as I understand it, that are involved
in FIRST. -That's right.
FIRST Nevada is a branch
of the global organization FIRST,
and we actually have a partnership
with the School District.
We provide workshops, training workshops,
for both teachers and students
that will be competing in the competitions
that our organization runs here in the valley.
We have camps as well throughout the year
to help service the community so the kids
have an opportunity to get fired up
about STEM and STEAM.
We also share curriculum with the School District,
and we helped develop that curriculum as well.
We had written the high school robotics
curriculum some years ago,
myself and two others from our school's team,
and we've recently revised that
so it would fit in with CTE parameters.
-Career and technical education?
-Yes, and it's now seen as a career pathway
which we hope opens the door to some
greater funding and resources,
and a shout-out to Eric Stensrud and CTE
for jumping on the train and helping us
move in the right direction.
-That's awesome.
Just so the audience knows,
robotics back in 2002, I think it was,
was an after-school group, and from there it went
into the program that did outstanding things
and now as you mentioned is part of the curriculum.
So it grew from something very small
and is now very large,
and I know you work with other schools.
Trustee Brooks, Cimarron-Memorial
is actually in your District,
and I know, I've been there several times.
It's great to see people after school,
students after school, working on these projects,
really excited to be there and to learn.
It's gotta make you feel good.
-It does. I think it probably makes
everyone feel good. -Absolutely.
Having so many students involved,
wanting to go, wanting to stay after school,
that's such a great signal, isn't it?
-Not only a great signal, it's a needed signal.
Many of our students in some instances
are not always engaged with the home because
mom is working late or dad is doing it,
and sometimes we have blended families
and lots of issues that come about.
But to have this is kind of exciting,
not only the STEM that goes into what we call
the science, technology, engineering and math,
but the coding that goes with it as well as
a lot dealing with the whole scientific method.
I just bring up this little point.
When you look at The Last Jedi,
Star Wars, and you look at BB-8,
you think about BB-8 and that little robot
that runs around beeping and doing lots of things,
it was a huge part of that movie
and that was somebody's idea
using that whole robotic process.
It's just exciting to see,
and I'm happy to see more young women
and young girls getting involved too.
-Joe, let's talk about that.
Let's talk about in the old days,
it was all men.
I think that's changed at Cimarron.
-It certainly has, and that's become one
of our points of pride, to see a greater
participation rate of the females.
Engineering in general has historically
had a low percentage, so we made that
one of our goals in our program
to get more women involved.
These young women currently as a matter of fact
hold all of the lead machine and shop
positions at our school, so they're primary
in the manufacturing and fabrication part,
and our lead design is female as well.
So that's telling us we're doing something right.
-I think some of the teams were majority
female at some point. -Right.
LVA, as far as I recall, is I think about
70% female, and it's exciting to see that.
-One other thing that's great about your program,
and I know this because I visited there,
Cimarron-Memorial is open to helping other schools.
That's how you've expanded a lot of this.
If there are schools that don't have
a robotics program and they want some help,
I know the advisors at the school are more
than willing to have those students come in.
If they want to set up a group
and they don't have space at their school,
you will provide space to help kick that off
and I think that's something,
that sharing of knowledge is great.
-Right. That's really one of the primary goals
of the FIRST organization
is to develop opportunities
for other individuals.
Those who have greater resources
like our school for instance,
and our program have an opportunity then
to share and give back to those others
through mentorship opportunities.
Our goal is not to be just the top team
in Las Vegas or in Nevada or the world.
Our goal is really to pull others up
so they have an opportunity to share
some of the successes that we've seen,
and I don't just mean on-the-field successes.
More importantly, I'm talking about
the lifelong successes, the skills kids develop
in the programs that we're talking about.
-I think you've had a lot of help
from local businesses to also sponsor
some of these things, right?
-Right. We have partnerships
with a number of different businesses,
and for them the benefit of course
is sometimes quite immediate.
We send a lot of kids to internships,
and a lot of those kids are hired later on
by local industries who are desperate
for technologically savvy kids.
-They've given the school in some cases the machine,
students can do it, and they can decide
to go directly into the workforce
after high school or go on to college.
-That's correct.
-It also takes community efforts like that
in education just in general, right,
to have businesses come forward
and financially support and help students
see the opportunities.
-Well, for one thing, this is what education is about,
innovation, looking into the future, the vision.
Now, who thought 30 or 40 years ago
that robotics would take such a turn
except the futurists who did talk about that?
You've got your industry, and the car industry,
many of your factories, and all of them
are using some of this technology,
and students in those classes are going to be
right there positioned to lead the charge
in terms of development, innovation and design
and helping make those connections in the future.
-It seems like it creates such interest,
and that's the point about students
staying after school when they don't have to.
-Of course, you want to give kids a reason
to stay engaged and also to prepare them
for jobs the future. -Right. Well, we love it
and keep up the good work there, Coach Barry.
-It's been a pleasure.
-We love to get the updates,
especially going to world championships,
and second place is still outstanding.
-Thank you very much.
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