One of our biggest accomplishments has been starting a younger FTC team out of the Boys and Girls Club, the Zoomies. The Zoomies participate in the same competition and are grades 3-7. We mentor the Zoomies and help them with anything they need to be successful in the competition. We especially help the Zoomies with coding and one GigaBite member is their driver coach at competitions.  Teaching the zoomies supports our mission of getting more kids invested in STEM and robotics. By the time they are old enough to join GigaBite, they already have an applicable foundation of technical skills that they are able to build upon to compete at a higher level.

Over this past summer, four of our members, Josie, Arya, Connor, & Logan, worked for out coach David as interns at his STEM summer camps. Our members were able to teach the camps to kids in our community from ages kindergarten to eighth grade. They taught camps such as fundamentals of STEM, maker, LEGO robots, and a student favorite, the mini battle-bots camp. For the four of them, teaching these camps was a full circle moment. They all grew up going to David's camps, which sprouted their passion for STEM in the first place, so it was an incredible experience to teach and share their immense passion for STEM.  A big project that the interns were able to help with was the wooden boat camp in partnership with the BGC and the Maritime foundation. They built wooden boats from scratch, (and some silly mistakes were made, like the paintbrush epoxied on the bottom, which is shown in the photo) and they were floating and fully functional when tested! These members of GigaBite hope to continue working as STEM Interns teaching at these summer camps, and fostering a love for STEM in young members of our community for years to come. 

We have given many demos of our robot to kids of all ages. Most kids at the Boys and Girls Club have seen our robot and know that robotics is available to them. It is important to us to get kids invested and aware of robotics at a young age so they what is available to them in South Lake Tahoe. Many kids and parents are excited about the availability of robotics in our community and are eager to join when the kids are old enough. In the meantime, we will continue our efforts of making STEM accessible in our community. If you would like us to come to a demo to a group of kids, reach out to us at gigabiterobotics@gmail.com and we will try to schedule something!

We have been able to reach out and hear from many people who work in STEM in our community. Doing this outreach is great for our team of aspiring engineers and people who want to go into STEM-related fields. We have been able to talk to our coach David a mechanical engineer from MIT, and one of our mentors David who has worked as a professional 3D designer. Some of our sponsors such as Lumos a civil engineering firm and Slate Geotechnical a geotechnical engineering consulting company have been able to show us what they do in their engineering jobs. Another great opportunity we have had is doing a lesson with the MIT Spokes students, a group of MIT students who go across the country and teach STEM to kids. Some of our members were able to teach with them and learn about different people's journeys ending up at MIT. Anyone who wants to talk to our team about what they do in a STEM-related field, please reach out at gigabiterobotics@gmail.com !