Girl’s Connect is an all-girl introduction to the FIRST LEGO League. Teams of girls join professional computer scientists and engineers and learn how to build and program LEGO robots to complete real-world tasks.
HUNTINGTON - Two teams of girls from Gateway Regional Junior High School took part in a Girl’s Connect robotics event in Holyoke recently, with one of the Gateway teams scoring the highest number of points for their robot challenge.
Girl’s Connect is an all-girl introduction to the FIRST LEGO League. Teams of girls join professional computer scientists and engineers and learn how to build and program LEGO robots to complete real-world tasks.
“I liked meeting all the nice girls from all the other schools,” said Megan Jacques. “It was amazing how kind and helpful everyone was to each other.”
“There was more of an emphasis on collaboration and helping, than on competition,” confirmed Deb Rossman, a Gateway teacher who served as an advisor to the girls.
“Teams shared their programming information and everyone received certificates of award – each named for a famous scientist – and medallions for participating.”
The event was held at the Green Computing Center. Students were given Lego Mindstorm robotics kits and about 15 minutes of instruction. They were then tasked with building robots that they had to program to achieve specific tasks on an obstacle course. As such, the girls had to program the robots for wheel rotations, steering, speed, distance and direction. The robots also had to be designed to move a ball and a lever, with teams receiving bonus points if the robots returned to their starting point.
“I liked how we got to figure out how to program our robot together,” said Destiny Kraft. “I also liked being able to bond with other girls.” Abby Albitz agreed, adding that she also liked testing the robots.
The program is part of a study by Florence Sullivan, of the University of Massachusetts College of Education. While women have been increasing in the fields of medicine and mathematics, participation is much lower in other fields like engineering. Computer science is one of the most under-represented fields for women.
The study is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, with a goal of developing better teaching materials and practices to help girls become interested and successful in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
Sullivan went to the participating schools to meet with the girls ahead of time. Her research team, which filmed this and other Girls Connect events, is studying how the girls participated in planning and executing the robotics challenge. In particular, the research team is studying girls’ collaborative problem solving skills and their attitudes about themselves when engaged in challenging engineering and computer science activities. In addition to being recorded, each team was interviewed during the day by the researchers.
“I learned that women are good at other things, just as much as men, and they are starting to realize this,” said Alina Samoylenko.
“I got a valuable education learning about how to program robots,” added Jessica Garriepy.
