Congratulations To Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Tech Hoppers - Meet Our Local NYC First Lego League Robot Builders April 19 At Roosevelt Island Library For Awards Presentation And Demo Of Their Robot Project

The Roosevelt Island Girl Scouts Tech Hoppers competed in and won awards in the recent NYC First Lego League (FLL) Challenge robot building program. 

The Tech Hoppers were introduced by Girl Scout Troop 3233 Leader Susy del Campo Perea during the April 3 Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Board of Directors meeting public session and received the congratulations of Board members.

Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Troop 3233 Leader Suzy del Campo Perea reports:

The Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Tech Hoppers invites our community, adults and youth, to the presentation of their NYC First Lego League Challenge Bronze Award Project this Wednesday April 19 from 6:15-7pm at the New York Public Library Roosevelt Island Branch (504 Main Street) .  

The Tech Hoppers will have a presentation about the renewable energy innovation project they researched, follow by Q&A and close with a showcase of the robot they built for the FLL.

When you talk or hear the word robotics in elementary or middle school, you certainly think of something very basic. maybe something like a car moving back and forth, or just a square box with a movable part up and down; and then you add competition, it sounds like faster, bigger and brighter. Then you add Legos and it sounds more exciting for kids and confusing for adults.

The Tech Hoppers is so much more than having a robot made out of Legos. It is about researching a topic given, based on the research, creating an innovation, talking to experts in the field, building a prototype based on your innovation and research, and presenting their findings to 3-5 judges during the competition. The cherry on the cake, is that they also get to build, with special Legos, a robot with 6 motors, one brain and different moving arms and parts, and then programming it to go through a map with several movable Lego structures in 2.5 min

First, the Roosevelt Island Tech Hoppers worked in the Core Values of FIRST (innovation, fun, )

Then they got the topic of Renewable Energy and started working on that Research.

At the same time they started assembling their robot and dived in programming it, testing and run it every single weekend @ Cornell Tech Café.

Not long after, they came with an innovation for renewable energy, moved from sun based solar energy to soil based microbial fuel cells.

Week after week they made progress in all 3 areas: core values, innovation and robot programming.

They wet their feet on their first competition, a scrimmage at Chapin School where they won 1st Place Core Values. They learned the rules of the game and saw their competition.

Qualifiers were held in February where they won 2nd place in Robot design and the Silver Ticket to pass to Semifinals!

By March 5th @ Semifinals the Tech Hoppers won their Golden ticket to Finals and another Core Values Trophy! They only had 7 days to polish and correct anything that will put them closer to score higher at Finals.

Finally the moment they were waiting for: compete at the Finals of FLL on March 12th, which is the equivalent of the FLL State finals.

Our very own Tech Hoppers compete against teams between 4th-8th grade, winning 2nd place Core Values!

It was indeed a sweet victory as they were the only team of Girl Scouts, and the only team with High School Coaches, instead of professional adults that have years of experience and/or professional instructors.

The Tech Hoppers wouldn’t have made it this far with out the support and partnership of GSGNY, Cornell Tech, Cornell Tech Café, their Girl Scout family members and troop sisters, and of course our Roosevelt Island Community.

The Tech Hoppers are:

• Alexa Baldwin
• Alyse MacGonagle 
• Ava Gordon 
• Chelsea Chang 
• Duygu Gurdal 
• Itziar Borja del Campo 
• Kai Putnam 
• Leire Borja del Campo 
• Madison Chang 
• Mina Kim 

Tech Hoppers Coaches: 

• Alua Zhanuzakova 
• Charlotte Peterson 

Mentors and Hosts: 

• Cornell Tech, specially Sophie Lanchez 
• Heather Smith (GSGNY Troop 3001) 
• Fay Christian (GSGNY Troop 3233) 
• Mor Naaman (Cornell Tech, GSGNY Dad) 
• Roberto Borja (NYCHA, GSGNY Dad) 

Volunteers: 

• Conall MacGonagle 
• Ender Gurdal 
• Eddie Chang 
• Jenn Chang

The Tech Hoppers name was chosen because the Girl Scouts meet and have support from Cornell Tech and in honor of Grace Hopper, a pioneer in computer programming.

Learn more about NYC First Lego League Challenge robotic competition.

Roosevelt Island Girl Scouts Tech Hoppers Lego League Robotics Team Win Award For Innovative Solution To Combined Sewer Overflow Problem With Support From Cornell Tech Faculty And Students

Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Troop 3001 Leader Aiesha Eleusizov reports:

Our troop’s robotics team was featured in a special video at the Girl Scouts of Greater New York Gala at Cipriani on Monday evening! Several of the Girl Scouts on the team attended the Gala and showcased the robot and their project. We hope you enjoy the video and if you see the Tech Hoppers around the island - encourage them to keep coding!

Cornell Tech Director of K - 12 Education Diane Levitt tweets:

Watch the story of the #TechHoppers, the #RooseveltIsland @GirlScoutsNYC robotics troop sponsored by @cornell_tech. We loved having these amazing young women on our campus every week. Can't wait for next year! @girlscouts @SylviaAcevedo @lathamwatkins https://t.co/P6Ev2OkRF4

— Diane Levitt (@diane_levitt) May 2, 2018

and shares the video of Roosevelt Island's Tech Hoppers Girl Scouts Troop 3001.



Ms Eleusizov adds:

The Tech Hoppers would like to express our sincere appreciation to Cornell Tech and Girl Scouts of Greater New York for their generous support of Roosevelt Island’s Girl Scout Troop 3001’s FIRST Lego League Robotics team this season! Their support has helped these girls have an amazing STEM experience this year! They earned third place overall in the qualifiers and won an award for their creative presentation made by the team about their innovative solution to solving the problem of Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) - which gave them a spot in the NY Citywide finals!

Cornell Tech provided an amazing motivational workspace for the girls at the Maker’s Lab at Cornell Tech. often there were Cornell grad students there working on projects at the same time - and the Girl Scouts were inspired by hearing about their cool high tech projects. They printed Cornell Tech and Girl-Scout inspired sweatshirts for the girls and helped them design and make their own light-up “Grace Hopper” headbands and hosted a fun tech end of the year celebration/party! Cornell Tech also generously sponsored Lego missions and robot supplies such as extra sensors to help the girls to build an amazing robot and program it to achieve its missions.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Diane Levitt, Senior Director of K-12 Education for Cornell Tech - she sacrificed her Wednesday evenings from September to March to support our team, allowing them to meet in the Maker Lab. She also led many awesome STEM learning activities and found incredibly patient student mentors for our budding engineers.

Jivesh Tolani, an MBA student at Cornell Tech, mentored the girls weekly since September - teaching not only our girls to code their robot to solve missions, but also mentoring other Girl Scout robotics teams in other parts of NYC. His dedication to the team was so appreciated.

Thanks to Niti Parikh, director of the MakerLAB, who let us use the lab all semester and leave our large table with lego missions in the middle of the lab all season!

Falana Ash joined us in the MakerLab when Diane wasn’t available and did the ordering of supplies and sweatshirts to make sure we had everything we needed for the girls to do their best.

Technologist in Residence Benedetta Simeonidis and David Gibbs, taught the girls about circuits and helped them make light- up Grace Hopper hats.

Cornell students and staff helped the girls further develop their idea for a new type of rainwater harvesting tank - and prepare a “Shark Tank” style presentation for the Global Innovation Award.

Steve Noone from the Cornell Tech capital planning team walked the girls around the campus and explained how the campus was built to manage water - inspiring the girls to come up with a solution to help solve the problem of Combined Sewer Overflow.

Thank you Cornell Tech and Girl Scouts of Greater New York!

Congrats to Roosevelt Island Girl Scouts Tech Hoppers Robotics Team.

Great job and keep coding!!!!!.