WHS robotics teams compete in statewide competition

By Masha Yurkevich

This past Saturday, the Windham High School robotics teams 1810S 1810T competed in the Maine State Championships in South Portland. They had spent months preparing and qualifying for this event, making adjustments to their robot in order for it to perform at its best on the big day.

WHS Team 1810S consists of Francesca Lomonte, Victoria Lin, Pyper Harris, and Rosario Lydon, and WHS Team 1810T consists of Emma Kennedy, Ava Kennedy, and Colby Prescott. The two Windham teams competed with 72 other teams, 48 of which were in the high school division.

 

Windham High teams 1810S and 1810T competed in the
Maine State Robotics Championships last weekend in
South Portland. Team 1810S members are Francesca 
Lomonte, Victoria Lin, Pyper Harris and Rosario Lydon.
Team 18100T members are Emma Kennedy, Ava Kennedy,
and Colby Prescott. The two Windham teams competed 
against 72 other teams, including 48 from the high school
division. SUBMITTED PHOTO

Michelle Lane is the coach for the WHS robotics teams. She started developing the team five years ago when she started teaching at Windham. She was the Robotics Team coach at the previous school where she taught and wanted to start a team in Windham.

The team was officially formed in the fall of 2019. Lane received a grant that would give the school a robotics kit if they purchased one. This would allow for two groups of students that could compete at the competitions, which was perfect for the five interested students.

All five students only had six weeks to work on one robot for the first competition that they attended in November of 2019, since the other kit did not arrive in time. There have been other students interested in joining, though the team has not been able to reach out due to limited transportation and the amount of robot kits that are available.

“The purpose of the Robotics Team is to have a place where students can apply what they learn in their academic classes and to practice critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork skills all while working on an engaging, hands-on robotics challenge” says Lane. “Team members learn a variety of skills that will help them be successful in life. The main one being able to follow the engineering design process, which can be applied to most issues the students may face in their life.”

The process allows students to understand the importance of researching, developing multiple solutions, analyzing those solutions to choose the best one, creating the solution, and then evaluating their solution. During this process students also learn organization, time management, dependability, adaptability, and communication skills.

The team names, 1810S and 1810T, have an interesting story behind them. When you register a team with VEX Robotics Competition, you need to pick numbers and a letter that will be used to distinguish the teams from one another. At Lane’s previous school, she just used the ending of the school phone number, so it would be easy to remember. She decided to do the same when she went to register the Windham High team, since the number was available.

Lane registered the first team as 1810W, W for Windham. The second kit did not arrive until later in the year, so she let that team choose their own letter, S for superior. When she registered the third team in 2021, she decided to just continue in the alphabet, T. Lane retired the W team, since it was all seniors last year and they helped start the team.

Francesca Lomonte is a sophomore at WHS and is part of the 1810S team. This is her fourth year in robotics. She did two years of robotics at the middle school level. She joined Lego League at the beginning of sixth grade and VRC the beginning of freshman year.

“In robotics, we work together to design, build, and program a robot that can compete in this year's VEX Robotics Competition game,” said Lomonte. “The game this year is called Spin Up, which is like disc golf but with more rules. Using only pieces that are put out by VEX Robotics, we have to find ways to play the game, decide on which one works best in relation to the amount of time we have and the materials we have access to, construct the robot, then program a controller to make the bot work, as well as two autonomous programs.”

Even though the two teams are separate, they work very well together and help each other when needed.

“If someone walked into the wood shop on a Tuesday afternoon, they would probably find seven teenagers laughing and working together to create something great with music playing in the background,” said Lomonte. “We're all able to be casual around each other and everyone on both teams from WHS works well together and you can tell that we really enjoy each other's company. We also have to put together an Engineering Design Notebook which marks all of our progress and work throughout the season and can help to win awards like the Judges Award.”

Though none of the teams ended up qualifying for the world robotics competition, Team 1810S ended up ranking seventh in skills and Team 1810T in 8th and team 1810S brought home the Inspire Award and team 1810T brought home the Judges Award. <

WHS Robotics Team takes second in Thomas College Virtual Challenge

Members of Windham High School's Robotics Team are,
from left, Victoria Lin, Pyper Harris, Dillon Foley, Waylon
McDonald, and Julian Howard. The team will be participating
in further robotics competitions at Thomas College later
this month. SUBMITTED PHOTO 

By Elizabeth Richards

In an unusual year, the Windham High School Robotics Team is taking on new challenges and learning new skills.  Recently, three of the five members of the team participated in the Thomas College Coding and Innovation challenge. Their entry tied for second place.

Windham High School Computer/Tech teacher Michelle Lane, who started the Robotics Team at WHS last year, made a last-minute decision to sign them up for the challenge, which was to recreate a children’s book using building and coding in Minecraft. Team members Victoria Lin, Pyper Harris and Julian Howard chose The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and dove into the challenge. 

Their video had to be created in one week, and the three did not have prior experience coding in Minecraft. They met the challenge head on, working together, despite technical difficulties, to put the project together. 

Harris said that server problems prevented her from joining the game with Lin and Howard.  The students ended up working on their own pieces of the story and Lin edited it together using iMovie to create their video submission.

One of the biggest challenges, Lin said, was that they had a lot of work to do in very little time.

This was the first time the team had participated in this kind of challenge, and each member came out of the experience having learned something.  Though Harris said the technical issues prevented her from learning how to code due to time constraints, she said she learned how to use Minecraft better through this experience.

“I think I’ve learned a bit about how we can use the coding blocks in a very different kind of way,”
Howard said.

He said he was able to look at how the process of block coding, where, lines of code are put into blocks that can be stacked into a program, can change between different engines or software. 

“[It is] very interesting, how one can take a concept and shift it into something new with a new environment,” Howard said.

Lin said being able to code made the repetitive building much easier than having to do it all manually.

Having a limited amount of time to work with made the experience stressful, Harris said. 

“I think we would have been able to do better if we had more time,” she said.  

Howard said he was shocked that they tied for second place.

“We had a lot of technical issues, but we somehow did very good, and I’m proud of that, even if the result was shocking,” he said.

The team is part of VEX VRC Robotics. The season looks different this year, but Lane said she has been able to get pieces so they can begin building their robot for this year’s game. 

There will be virtual competitions that the team can participate in, Lane said.

“It’s more individual than it was but hopefully we’ll be able to start doing something by the end of January,” she said.

Traditionally, Thomas College has offered an in-person overnight challenge called the Thomas Cup.  This year, there are several smaller virtual challenges, free and open to all high school students in teams of three to five. 

At the end of January, they’ll hold the “Thomas Cup in a Box,” a 12-hour virtual event that consists of all the challenges. Teams can choose a twelve-hour block, either 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. in which to participate, according to the Thomas College website.

Lane said the team also participated in the CSI Challenge, getting an honorable mention.  They will do the Esports challenge in early January, and probably participate in the Robotics challenge as well, she said.

She’d also like them to participate in the “Thomas Cup in a Box” event at the end of January.

Team members said that they are interested in participating in challenges like this again now that they have some experience.

“I feel like there was a lot of missed opportunity to delve more into the code to create something more,” Howard said.

Lin agreed.

“It was a great learning experience,” she said, “and a nice thing to do when we’re stuck at home.” <